A Friend of the Devil: Inside a Famous Cold War Deception
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
And yet today students are perfectly willing to detail the minutiae of their lives on their online permanent record.
If everyone's skeletons are out in the open for everyone else to see, they're no longer skeletons.
What one social group considers a skeleton in their closet, another considers a badge of honor.
I benefitted from this, I'm into and have been into all sorts of things that would have socially stigmatized me 50 years ago. Meanwhile, someone else who is racist or beats their spouse or kids is likely to face social condemnation.
Times change, in this case, for the better.
I don't think that STD's, alcoholism, drug abuse or mental health issues are ever going to be considered badges of honour over the course of people's careers.
If you don't believe that the "delete" and "mark private" features of these online publishing things work, well there's a lot of juicy info there for the taking on tomorrow's public figures.
I don't think STDs and youthful alcoholism will be badges of honor, but I think there's an undercurrent of people feeling as if we all have baggage of one type or another. They're much more likely to be ruled out of public office for pictures of themselves wearing "race face" or date rape bragging or something.
I switched from skeletons to baggage for my clichés...
Style occurs when you use word choice to impress the reader, not when you place some outdated droppings over a letter which you regard as compulsory.
They use the diaeresis because they regard its absence to be incorrect. Which means that they regard everyone who writes "cooperation" as committing an error. Hence, snooty.
I wonder, do these pompous pricks tell their children to write that way in school? Or answer that way in spelling bees? I can just see it: "Hey Johnny, spell cooperation!" "Cee, oh, oh-with-a-diaeresis, pee, ...". Or maybe they feed them crap like, "Johnny, at school, just play along and use the dumb spelling okay? But between us at home, we know better, don't we! We write it as coöperation with the two dots." "Dad, you mean among us, don't you?" "No, I mean between. Mommy left a note that she won't be coming home any more, so it's just you and me. Pardon me, you and I."
The way things are, though, most people still believe the American government can do no wrong and every other nation is out to get us. It's so disappointing.