People Who Care

Glenn Reynolds points to Jeff Jarvis' great EXASPERATED post about Eric Alterman dissing blogs and finding it almost impossible to fathom that bloggers write for free because they care about their audience and about their colleagues. I have to smile. I love when Jeff says:

Perhaps, Eric, these are simply people who care. What a concept, caring. What a snotty attitude: Only the pros and a "tiny" number of others can do this. What crap. The whole thing is a bit hard to take but, as always, Alterman takes the cake.

I met someone yesterday -- a man -- and I was trying to explain what Halley's Comment was and especially the genesis of the "How To Become An Alpha Male In 18 Easy Lessons" posts I started about a year ago.

I started my blog when my dad was getting more and more ill in a nursing home after he broke his hip in December 2001 and his eventual death in April 2002. He never got up again. The posts were a way for me to understand this man -- surely this was my last chance -- who had been quite the Alpha Male for a lifetime and was now playing out the final act, curtain call, fade to black and all.

I cared about him. I cared about others in beds next to his -- many seniors who never had any visitors. I cared about a lot of people my age and younger going through the same wrenching time with their parents. I was writing for them and for me.

My blog was pretty sad in those days, especially right after he passed away, but things changed and soon there was a sunnier side to my blog as I began to meet many lively, funny, sexy vital men working as a conference organizer at Harvard. I was trying to figure out another mystery. It started with my dad but began to spread out into the world of men around me. Having worked in high tech for a long time, believe me there were a lot of men around me.

Something strange had happened to men. Feminism had left them out in the cold. All the wonderful Alpha Male attributes that my dad had been secure, confident and boastful in displaying -- his strength, his masculinity, his love of women, his flirtations with them, his "Me Tarzan, You Jane" maleness -- some how had become OFF LIMITS in this new generation of men. They were left with no place to stand. They had to apologize for what was basic and quintessential about their masculinity. It seemed really sad to me.

I wanted to understand it. So I blogged about it. I cared about these guys and I suspected that the ones I knew up close were experiencing things that MANY men I would never know, but might read my weblog, were experiencing. Boy, was I right about that. And the email started to pour in. Many of them were along the lines of "you're saying things I'm feeling but none of us men dare to say. Keep it up, thanks."

I explained to this new friend the other morning that the Alpha Male posts were like a kindof one-woman "welcome home from the battlefields of feminism"movement, (and I say that with all due respect to the very serious and honorable Vietnam Vets welcome home initiative.) I wanted to welcome men back to their wonderful maleness. Celebrate it. Tell them to stop apologizing for it. I wanted women to ease up on them, appreciate them, care for them, stop whacking them over the head with the essentially defunct feminist agenda. I wanted women to take their feminine power back as well, which I thought and still think is the very big upside for women as men also return to their better nature. Many women disagreed with me. So be it.

I thought we had all lost a lot of what was unique and wonderful about our differences. I simply felt the urgent need to write about it. I hoped it would make people think, make people laugh, make people think they were okay, not bad. I didn't make any money doing it back then.

I did make a little money recently selling autographed copies of the first chapter, but at $19.95 a pop, that was more of a lark and a way to try out Paypal, than become a captain of industry and generate piles of cash. (Believe me, it didn't, but I really appreciate you folks who bought that first chapter! Thanks again.)

Lately I'm getting more offers to write in other venues. It's flattering. I want to sell my writing, but I also want my readers to be able to come here at 10:30 on their coffee break and read new stuff for free, stuff I wrote just for them, because I know they care about me and I care about them. It's that simple.