I love my day job covering criminal justice in New Orleans but I also got inspired by the people I met in the course of researching this piece. The Collective of Lady Arm Wrestlers, or CLAW, strikes me as anathema to a lot of the bullshit that can sometimes make America suck, and as celebrating all of the things that can sometimes make America kick ass. CLAW cheerleader Cathy Harding’s closing quote sums it up:

“But it’s incredibly transgressive, in some ways, that we’re able to use people’s excitement about scary women in costumes to make a point about empowerment. They’re not being duped. There’s just some wonderful, unexpected merging there of base instincts with higher order values in a way that only a theatrical event makes possible.”

Hope you enjoy reading it. Now I’m trying to figure out how to cover the World Championships in June…

HOT ROBOT SEX: Harrison Ford and Mary Sean Young as a mercenary robot-killer and a robot (with a very nice perm), but falling in “love” regardless, in Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie “Bladerunner.” Aside from the obvious interest such a photo is bound to generate, the deeper point is going to sneak up on you later if you stick with me, here.  

I was inspired to create the Spotify playlist by a recent post at The Times-Picayune by music writer Alison Fensterstock, who used the music-sharing platform to come up with a dozen songs to accompany the Occupy New Orleans movement. My own playlist is entitled “Nine songs to do journalism by.”

But first, why do I bother doing journalism, in the first place? What’s the point? Don’t worry, I do actually plan to answer this question — it’s not just a cry for help. And reader I know: I’m making you quite a lot of promises, early on, here. But I don’t do so lightly. So let’s do this.

I think the Internet’s impact has been to change our notions of ownership. Whether it’s ownership of information — for example, The Lens, where I work during the day, frequently posts public records online in an effort to make them genuinely public, instead of only nominally so — or ownership of people in relationships as they’re shared in new ways on platforms such as Facebook, or ownership of a notion as complicated and simple as democracy. Because whatever skeptics like Malcolm Gladwell may write, I’m convinced the Arab Spring couldn’t have happened in quite the way it did without Twitter. Meanwhile here in New Orleans the rise of reader engagement through social media and technology is just starting to make its true impact felt, I think.

Sadly the technological revolution in journalism has its uglier side — I’m not comfortable, for example, with the fact that even The New York Times chose to publish video footage of Qaddafi’s brutal death, presumably on the basis that if The Times hadn’t published it, readers’ eyeballs would have sought the footage out elsewhere. Why my discomfort? Well. I think basic human decency is all the more important in an age where we can break down such things easily with technology. In fact if journalism is not about standing up for what’s right, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, then what is it for?

Qaddafi, for all his negative qualities, was clearly mentally ill, and I’m not sure I like it when the country’s paper of record sees fit to publish video of those who would lord it over a defeated dictator’s dead body. I thought this was the argument many in the U.S. were using against torture during the war on terror; that we’re no better than Al Qaeda if we treat our enemies as badly as they would treat us. That decency, in the end, is what’s worth fighting for, not the opportunity to gloat over a corpse. Hence the New York Times’s decision not to publish photos of the late Osama bin Laden, and the U.S. Government’s decision to bury him at sea — there’s a double standard at work.

The New York Times even trotted out a talking-head psychologist to tell us all why it’s alright to gawk at videos of dictators being brutalized, which was followed up by a piece on How Dictators Die at The Daily Beast and a subsequent gallery of Famous Remains there. This was all just brilliant for garnering elusive web traffic, I’m sure. But perhaps the most transparently sensational aspects of all of it were the frantic repeated warnings that “what you’re about to watch may be shocking,” particularly as a prelude to Gawker’s “most graphic video of Qaddafi’s capture yet.” I mean: You really shouldn’t watch this, guys. It’s almost naughty.

Click.

In an age where the barriers of information ownership are breaking I’d still like the barriers of human responsibility to hold. For media — whoever they are — taking a more principled stand against some of this stuff might be to say: “You know, there’s some sick video on the internet if you’d like to go and search for it, but we’re not going to host that kind of thing on our website, no matter what it costs us in advertising revenue, because we don’t think it’s right.”

It is still proper, I think, for editors to actually edit content, based on what they feel is right. That’s what builds loyal readers. And that’s what should build journalistic clout. Not sensationalism or appealing to our base desire to witness HOT ROBOT SEX, blood, or human suffering. Even if, you know, the lunatic old bugger Qaddafi really perhaps deserved what he got, didn’t he?

And sure, the Libyans can rationalize what happened to Qaddafi differently — after all, he did kill thousands of them — but in this new era of global citizenship we’re all supposedly a little more responsible, now, for what happens, once we’ve gawked at it. And I am deeply uncomfortable with the implication that technology — particularly American-invented technology, since I am an American citizen these days — can empower people to stage so-called revolutions that might in the end also dissolve our common humanity. For me, that’s not what a true revolution should be about.

There are plenty who feel good journalism speaks for itself, that we need not package it to lure in a fickle public, or market it too much for fear of appearing to lose our sacred objectivity. And I can see where they are coming from, because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and I do believe wholeheartedly in the reader’s ability to judge such matters. That said there is nothing that drives me harder as a reporter than a sense that occasionally I may be encountering injustice. Nothing will drive me harder to get the facts straight, for example, than a lingering suspicion that the facts, perhaps, are not as they should be, not as they could be, and that I would like to share those facts with people because I have a feeling that the reader might feel about them as I do, given the chance to reflect.

Private Eye editor Ian Hislop mused on this idea in a recent interview in The Scotsman, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his publication’s existence. Private Eye may be a satirical paper but it has also broken some important investigative stories over the years, and Hislop made the point that humor can often be the quickest way of alerting a reader to injustice.

“On the whole I think humour should be directed at the strong,” Hislop was quoted as saying, in the Scottish paper (hence the extra ‘u’ in “humor.”) “Again, I shouldn’t quote too much, this shows my grandeur, but it was Mencken, wasn’t it, the great American satirist, who said the job is to ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted’. In other words, don’t put the boot into people.”

And that’s my point about journalism, too, that whatever advances are made, we shouldn’t ever use it to put the boot into people. There can be honor, at some point, even in the execution of violent revolutions.

Perhaps I’m narcissistic about my own decency, and I’m aware that all of this makes me sound a little old-ladyish. Lens news editor Jed Horne, who tends to be right about such things, also suggested that perhaps all the videos were an absolutely critical bit of documentary evidence at a time when there was some question as to whether Qaddafi was truly dead. Horne drew an analogy with the famous photograph of Hitler’s corpse, while acknowledging that it failed to end the debate over whether the Reichsfuhrer had in fact survived. Maybe video would have made the difference.

Thing is: There’s something much more chilling about a cellphone video than blurry pictures printed on newsprint. Maybe that’s my problem: That I struggle with, as well as revel in, the immediacy of the digital world. I found it alarming as well as amusing, on Sunday, when another friend and I were speculating about the rumors that Qaddafi was sodomized after his death, that both of us realized simultaneously it had to be an urban myth, because if he had been, there’d be video of it.

We can’t shy away so much from the truth these days. And the truth is not always beautiful. Although I’m convinced it’s possible to continue to pursue truth, and that there is still plenty of beauty in, the digital world — even if it is as uncomfortable to overthink, sometimes, as the HOT ROBOT SEX scene in the movie “Bladerunner,” explored in Mark Monahan’s interview with Chris Cunningham at The Daily Telegraph here:

“The love scene in Deckard’s apartment,” he says, “is so beautiful and strange. If Deckard is supposed to be a replicant, then this is basically an uncomfortable dialogue between two non-humans, one of whom is about to have their first sexual encounter.”

The full scene is available on Youtube and the entire movie is now available on Netflix, although you probably shouldn’t overthink the postmodern implications of that fact. But please, if you have the time, just watch the scene and think about it, in light of everything I’ve written. And ask yourself: Does advancing technology necessarily destroy authenticity and depth of feeling? Perhaps it does. But I know that the scene makes me feel strongly that I wish it didn’t. That I would like to believe that it does not.

However confused we may feel, it’s such moments of confusion that were made for us to trust our instincts about what is just right.

Which brings us, by way of journalism, beauty, truth, confusion, clarity, digitization, and HOT ROBOT SEX, of course, to the music. I’m not even really sure how we got here, either, to be honest. But I enjoyed it and I hope that you did, too. It’s been too long since we did this, so let’s do it again, soon. Yeah? 

Spotify has found a way to make the sharing of music legal, and I’m fast turning into a Spotify evangelist, as a result. You’ll need to download Spotify, if you haven’t already. Then listen to my playlist “Nine songs to do journalism by.” Aaaand scene.

1. “Piss Factory,” Patti Smith Group. About a 16-year-old who gets a job working in an unjust environment, this track is both rambling but also, driven, coherent, and optimistic in the face of the injustice it describes, like journalism should be. Also: It’s beautiful regardless to just let the lyrics wash over you, which is a sign of really good writing, in my opinion.

2. “Gimme Shelter,” The Rolling Stones. The agencies and people being investigated by a good reporter would sing this. Because sometimes, reporters do uncover things that people would rather were kept secret, and there’s an “oh, my God” moment when you stumble across a document that proves your case, and perhaps even another “oh, my God” moment when you realize the potentially far-reaching implications of what you’ve found. It reminds you of that scene in the movie “Goodfellas” when the bodies all start showing up in dumpsters, even though that’s scored with an Eric Clapton song, not the Stones. I just prefer the Stones, they’re consistently more dramatic.

3. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” The Rolling Stones. Because you really can’t always get what you want: Sometimes you’ll spend considerable time looking into something, only to realize in the end that it’s not the story you thought it was. And sometimes you just can’t get hold of records for some reason, because they’re protected from release under some obscure law. Or you can’t afford to sue the agency to prove your point, and you just have to let it go, even though you can’t, really. But you’ve got to try to.

4. “Nobody does it Better,” Carly Simon. Because sometimes, you need a bit of reassurance when you’re doing this kind of work. And there’s nothing to make you feel more reassured than imagining you’re a spy. That’s right: Imagining. Just try not to take the idea too seriously.

5. “Caffeinated Consciousness,” TV On The Radio. For the moments when you’ve spent 54 straight hours importing scanned documents into an Excel Spreadsheet using Abby Finereader Express, because the agency that gave you the records told you they’d destroyed the computerized database, but you really need to be able to manipulate the data, and this is the only way to do it. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

6. “Sometimes I Cry,” Eric Benet. It’s true. Sometimes you actually do. As well as hit the desk in frustration, shout out expletives, have panic attacks, call up friends begging for their sympathy and in your darkest moments, even consider going to law school. Although to the best of my knowledge there aren’t any songs available entitled “Don’t, Whatever You Do, Go To Law School.” But I’m open to being educated on this point.

7. “First We Take Manhattan,” Leonard Cohen. It’s a song that embodies your ambition, and the total belief you sometimes need.

8. “Battle Without Honor or Humanity,” Tomoyasu Hotei. Because at some point when you get people in your sights, they might be inclined to start fighting dirty, and you need to have trained for that moment, and be ready to respond as your best self.

9 “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough,” Michael Jackson. Enough answers to your questions, not drugs to forget them with, unless you really can’t cope without them. In which case, go to a meeting. And remember: You’ll be fine. The world will keep turning, regardless of whether you write about it. Or not. And you can only do your best.

British. (photo by Andrew Adam)

I’m 31, now, still a baby really, they’re playing Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris on the overhead TVs, and I’m sitting next to a bored, nosy woman who has already read the Observer Review over my shoulder. Hopefully she’ll read this, too, and then look away so that we can be alone. That’s better.

I got the notebook out while I was listening to Billy Joel. He’s hardly cutting edge, even for my dad’s generation, but there’s still something about New York State of Mind that moves me, and reminds me of all the optimism I felt when I first moved to the United States in 2006. Who cares if the lyrics are simple, desperate, even? I don’t have any reasons. I left them all behind. These are feelings all of us experience, now and then. And the mood of the song got me thinking.

Being in England was delightful, if confusing. Having just taken American Citizenship I felt more like a foreigner than ever in the country of my birth. And perhaps the most foreign aspect of the English personality, for me these days, is the capacity that my countrymen and women have to disbelieve in themselves.

It’s not just in England, of course. I think something happens to us all, some time in high school, when we go from being told we can achieve anything, that we’re God’s own children, to being discouraged from taking risks, because we might look ridiculous if for some reason we failed. To begin with, perhaps, it’s the voices of our guidance counselors or teachers, well-meaning naysayers who suggest, for example, that a career in the fashion industry might not be as easy as wasting the next 50 years in middle management. Because there’s risk involved, the risk of failure, of humiliation, of shame, rather than the certainty of emotional compromise. The deadness of a life sacrificed for security. For something once called a pension.

It’s ridiculous to even suggest the tradeoff of passion for security in such simple terms. Especially with the state of the stock market today, and so many people having thought that they might be able to retire after many years only to realize it is no longer going to be a reality. But eventually, for many of us, the naysaying voices of those counselors and teachers are still replaced by some of our so-called friends, our families, sometimes, and perhaps most tragically, our own. While Americans are by no means immune from this tendency, the British fetish for modesty and politeness also digs out great reservoirs in the psyche, that seem easily filled with self-loathing.

“I’m no good at anything.”

“I’m lazy.”

“I’m useless.”

All of these phrases came out of the mouths of dear friends of mine over the last few weeks. And since I tend to invest significantly in friendships, that is to say I consider those words to have been uttered by some of the most attractive, hilarious, sensitive and energetic people I have ever known. On more than one occasion I felt the need to deliver a short, sharp, shock, a “snap yourself out of it” moment. Or what? Take them all down to the lake in Dirty Dancing and recreate the famous lift scene, one by one? As if to scream: “Believe in yourselves!”

Nobody puts the English in the corner. And yes of course, in that metaphor, I am visualizing myself as Patrick Swayze. Get over it.

Except I am still an insecure Baby, too, sometimes, and perhaps that’s why it drives me so crazy in the folks I love. I have days when I question myself a little, days when I question myself a lot, and days when quite honestly I suppose that I am useless. I just don’t believe it, any more, to my heart’s core, and I have a few things to thank for that, which are mostly to do with having moved to America.

There’s President Barack Obama, for a start, whose election changed my outlook forever. I simply could not believe that this country, with its history, could elect a black man President. And God Bless America for it, even if technically, I believe that God does not exist. I should also thank my ex-wife, who helped rescue me from alcoholism and gave me five, mostly, wonderful years. Then there are my bosses, my colleagues past and present, and there are of course my friends, old and new. Because however much they may do themselves down, their capacity to believe in me has sometimes seemed superhuman, especially in a few specific sets of circumstances.

I’ve had the time of my life!

America is a country that rewards tenacity. It rewards a philosophical attitude to failure, as long as something was learned in the attempt. As my great friend and former colleague Scrappers would say, it is a country that really does encourage its people to “fail harder,” and to not be afraid.

There are countless Americans who have inspired me and countless, too, who terrify me to bits. This is a country that produced Alec Baldwin and Roseanne Barr, and Dennis Rodman, and Paul Simon, and Carrie Fisher, to name a few random ones that occur to me off the top of my head, and who fall into the first category. But it also produced Michelle Bachmann, and Ray Nagin, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose website, even now, says: “stay tuned for my next move.”

This from a man who found himself trying to take charge of the eighth largest economy in the world while concealing a love child, born to his housekeeper, from his wife and legitimate family for 14 years.

So I’m not saying I understand America entirely just yet, or that I’m under any illusion that I ever will. More, that I return to the country this time with a deeper reserve of appreciation and energy than I’ve ever known, and that all the mischief and merriment I may have spread on its soil until now were only laying the groundwork for what’s to come. I keep listening to Sufjan Stevens’ song Chicago lately, in which he repeats the line “I made a lot of mistakes…I made a lot of mistakes,” to tremendous emotional effect. Yet it’s not despairing. It’s uplifting. It makes me feel like you should stay tuned for my next move.

What I’m really saying is this: That I’m returning to America, for better or worse, as a true American. And that while I am not in the market for a pliant housemaid, or considering a run for political office any time in the near future, that I suppose America, and New Orleans in particular, had better watch out for me when I get back. Because I’ll be back. Yes, that’s it: I’ll be back. No…

I am back. And I can’t wait to see you all, soon.

“In a psychiatric emergency, the response can be ad hoc and sometimes quite primitive. For example the Florida Parishes juvenile detention center still keeps a restraint chair in storage, in case a child becomes suicidal and nothing else can be done immediately. Before the center had the chair, which has not been used in four years according to a center manager, it used to rely on a football helmet to prevent suicidal juveniles from smashing their heads into the floor and walls.”

When I went to photograph the chair, the center manager showed me to the storeroom, where it was gathering dust next to a game of checkers and a hardback Jackie Collins novel. The chair will be outlawed in 2013 when new statewide standards come into effect although sadly, I don’t think the same can be said for the Jackie Collins novel.

The story, which also contains some remarkable statistical findings on overmedication, is live now at The Lens. I’m very grateful to all at The Lens and to everyone involved with the story who worked so hard to get it to publication. I never dreamed that I would be writing about such important issues when I started out in journalism and it really is a privilege to be working with so many people who care about this kind of thing just as much, if not more than, I do.

Last year, an anonymous writer took over the advice column Dear Sugar at The Rumpus. Soon, she’ll go public with her identity. Like many others, I’ve become obsessed with her advice. Her column isn’t about etiquette. Sugar writes about being jealous of other writers. She advises people to leave secure relationships because they just know they’re not happy. She tells about how she made it through the “thicket of shit” in her twenties. She writes about the absolute horror of grief. And it’s not about sex, either. Sugar is soooo over the idea that sex is the only way to connect emotionally or be fulfilled.

The interview gets into how Sugar’s anonymity has an impact on her advice. And we talk about Batman;

I think you should keep the mystique.

You think I should?

Well, I’m a romantic. I don’t doubt that if you do come out, everyone’s going to love it, and I don’t doubt that it’s going to be wonderful for everyone involved. But there is a kind of romance in…like, I love Batman. Batman is my favorite, and Batman and Bruce Wayne couldn’t exist without each other. They couldn’t. But the mystique about Batman is kept because he doesn’t tell anyone who he is. And there’s a great scene, it was on Youtube the other day, where Batman and Bruce Wayne have to have a conversation with each other in front of the commissioner. And there’s this sort of façade, but there’s this sort of beauty to it. Before this interview I was going to say, ‘I should give you some advice.’ And that would be it: Keep it private. But then there’s also, could you still make money if it were private? If I were in your position, I would claim it, I would say, ‘That’s me. Hello. I’m here. And let’s go for it.’ And I think that’s something that a lot of authors are scared to do, to claim their work.

Very proud of this. And thrilled to be working with editor Choire Sicha over there. Let me know what you think!

Update: Sugar followed up on our interview at TheRumpus. She said I “have the spark of life,” which is nice. But this is the bit I like:

I was trying to say that I think we ache for and deserve a different level of conversation when we talk about helping ourselves and transforming our lives: a greater complexity, a grittier acknowledgement of what it is we’re up against, even if that acknowledgement embarrasses us. I meant to say there is no cure except to live the hell out of our lives, to take it apart, to put it back together, to dig it all up, and then fill the hole. To help ourselves and one another to the best of our abilities. To believe everything entirely, while also calling bullshit for what it is.

Writer Neil Jordan directs Cathy Tyson and Bob Hoskins in this 1986 love story about a chauffeur to a high-class call girl. Simple, straightforward scenes between Tyson and Hoskins are touching and powerful—for example, when she buys him some good clothes, and he says “thank you.” You can’t quite figure why it works so well, then you realize: Acting.

•••

One of the only intentionally comic gangster films I’m aware of, this movie lays bare the ridiculousness of so many others in the genre. There’s grit amongst the hilarity, and the last scene is surprising and original in that way. But the highlight is Ray Winstone screaming through laughter during an escalating shoot-out: “Attach bayonets!” Jude Law also stars and is worth watching in case you forgot how he used to look before he went to seed.

•••

Young Ray Winstone stars as the daddy amongst a cast of boys at a reform school in the 1970s. The film was originally banned for screening by the BBC for supposedly being unrealistic, but survives as a work of art, a meditation on authority and honor in the harshest of conditions. Also, I’ve never watched a more harrowing rape scene, or been more taken in by its implications. Steel yourself first.

•••

Tim Roth made his on-screen debut in this 1982 film written and directed by Alan Clarke. Roth stars as Trevor, a 16-year-old hooligan determined to defy and antagonize authority wherever he finds it. The screenplay is didactic and occasionally feels like an Ibsen play, but it doesn’t take the easy road where it’s going. And it drags you there along with it.

Or the chief judge of traffic court telling me yesterday during an interview, “you’re going to educate all of us,” and pledging to follow the law this year for the first time.

The result of a six-month investigation, the story showed that of 11 criminal justice agencies in the city, only three were following state law when it comes to involving the public in their budgeting process. In excess of $26 million — and probably much more — is being spent without involving the public.

The story was picked up this morning by ProPublica’s “Muckreads” aggregator, and Liz Reyes and I discussed its implications on the FOX8 noon show today:

“Thank you for finding this document,” said councilwoman Susan Guidry, who has been leading a push for more budgetary openness over the last year. “I hope it will lead to a lot more openness around criminal justice budgets in the future.”

Me too.

To survive the coals, the instructor told us to visualize the most positive experience we’d ever had, and project it on a 100-foot movie screen inside our heads. Then you had to associate a gesture and a verbal hook with that vision, and hypnotize yourself so that you could call it to mind when you did it. Mine was a fist pump and the words “come on.” Said like a nervous boy from East Croydon but with the attitude of Biggie Smalls. In other words, I looked like an absolute mentalist before I did it. Friends who came to watch said they’d talked to me beforehand but that they couldn’t get through, and the only thing I remember of the conversations was the feeling of cool grass at the end of the feat. Then needing to sleep for 14 hours.

In my mind, I was visualizing Mr. Crouch. He was a well-meaning basketball teacher at my high school, one of the few athletics teachers who had ever believed that I would amount to anything outside the English classroom and frankly, one could tell that he was always rather conflicted about it. I didn’t play any of the other sports and I was too mouthy and a bit gay-looking/gay-acting to be well coordinated, which when you’re from Croydon meant you liked Morrissey. But I could jump higher than most of the other kids and that counted for a lot. Plus, I really looked up to Dennis Rodman.

I would play okay in practice and occasionally score once or twice in a game. But I wasn’t a star, and eventually Mr. Crouch decided to drop me from the team. The next practice I remember lining up a three-pointer, closing my eyes, and shooting it perfectly, right in his fucking face.

I have never been happier. And with that, here’s a mixtape of the songs I’ve been listening to most over the last six weeks.

Be My Downfall — Del Amitri
The Swish — The Hold Steady
I Never Said I Was Deep — Jarvis Cocker
What Is It This Time? — Jamie Lydell
Runnin’ — The Pharcyde
The Last Time I Saw Richard — Joni Mitchell
I Do My Father’s Drugs — Joe Pug
Your Touch — Black Keys

So much for dignity and decorum, I guess. But I hope you’ll enjoy it. And here’s to you, Mr. Crouch. Because while I didn’t realize it at the time, you may have very probably saved my life.