Presenting Facts, with Humor and Attitude (on Author Visits) by Dean Gloster
(In Which I Talk about Making National News this Week for Advising the
Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security on the Coronavirus. Yes, Really.)
Our topic
this month is what can librarians, teachers, students, and writers expect if you invite me to give a presentation
First,
humor.
I used to
be a stand-up comic, I wrote a masters’ thesis on humor techniques, and I spend
way too much time writing jokes for Twitter, where I have 138,000 followers.
(That number generally gets an ooooh from eighth graders.)
Second, you can expect that I’ll
probably customize it to refer to current events. That’s the former stand-up
comic in me: I like to riff on what’s happening now.
Third, you can expect that
somewhere in it, I’ll go deep. If we’re going to talk, we might as well talk
about something real.
For specific topics, I can do a
presentation on how (and why) to be funny, complete with practical humor
theory. (That is, taught in a way that a teen or adult can immediately use,
unlike the humor theory taught in some college classes.) I could also cover the
ethics and morality of humor, a subject most young comics (those under 40)
often don’t think enough about.
I can do a
presentation on the power of story—why presenting information as a story more effectively
moves and persuades people, along with the practical implications. I was a
lawyer for 30 years, and I did a lot of courtroom work, where the key to moving
the judge was to present the facts in the form of a story that made sense.
I can also
do a presentation on the Supreme Court—I was a law clerk to two U.S. Supreme
Court Justices.
For writers, I can also talk about
a variety of craft topics, including writing better dialogue, how (and how not
to) to work in backstory, techniques and tips for a fast, compelling opening,
and how and why to use humor, even in serious stories.
You can
also expect me to update those presentations to have a timely hook.
So if I were doing a presentation
today, I’d probably mention my fun tweet exchange this week with the acting Deputy
Secretary of Homeland Security that ended up in the national news. Especially
since it involved whether we’re going to die.
Some
background: After he came into office, Trump fired the entire U.S. pandemic
response chain of command and never replaced them. His administration savagely cut
disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. His hiring
freeze prevented the disease-prevention arms of those organizations from operating
effectively. And for other current vacant positions, he just has “acting”
directors, some of whom are holding down several jobs. On Monday, though, the
stock market fell in the U.S., with the Dow declining over 1,000 points because
of concerns over the impact on our economy of the spread of the coronavirus.
That created a problem for Ken
Cuccinelli, who is, in addition to being Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration, is also Acting Deputy Secretary of our entire Homeland
Security.
Cuccinelli had trouble getting into
the updated Johns Hopkins online map showing the real-time spread of the
coronavirus, and instead of calling them or asking someone in the government,
he did what some others in the administration do, and just tweeted about it:
It’s a little weird, crowdsourcing
IT help during a deadly pandemic because, as the acting head of an agency, you
don’t know how either a phone or the Internet work. So I responded:
But I took pity on him, and from my
brother Mark I got a link that was working, so I tweeted that to Clueless
Cuccinelli, along with a light drizzle of sarcasm:
That tweet ended up in the national
news the next day, because—understandably—the Huffington Post found the whole exchange
both alarming and entertaining.
Entertainment isn't everything. I grew up as the high-achieving son
of a neglectful, alcoholic, mentally ill mother who was sometimes dangerous.
(Which I wrote about here: http://yaoutsidethelines.blogspot.com/2018/02/my-mother-loved-and-so-so-lost-by-dean.html ) That helped me learn early that grownups will
sometimes not do their job to protect us, and we’ll have to find a way to do
better ourselves.
That’s a message I pass along in
some of my presentations, and it’s especially relevant today. Because my fun
exchange with clueless Ken Cuccinelli is part of a broader story now unfolding,
which is less funny: There is a global, spreading coronavirus pandemic that our
government is responding poorly to, and is lying to us about.
The virus, covid-19, is similar to
the cold virus, but somewhere between 7 and 20 times deadlier than the flu. Our
own CDC and outside scientists now say it is extremely unlikely that the spread
of the virus will be contained, particularly given that in China—despite
draconian efforts—it spread from a single city to throughout the country in 35
days. Now, there are more new cases outside China each day than in that
country. As I type this, our government’s response is frighteningly inept.
Against the advice of the CDC 14 infected Americans were brought back on a
flight of uninfected people, and then greeted by HHS staffers who were,
according to a whistleblower, unequipped with gear and uninformed about how to
avoid getting infected.
Yesterday as I type this, the
President falsely claimed there were only 15 infected Americans, when the Center
for Disease Control had admitted there were 60, one discretely identified in
California. Today as I type this, there are 28 identified in California alone.
And the CDC’s criteria for identifying infections is dangerously flawed—if you
have all the symptoms, you are not even tested, unless you have recently been
in China, or you know you have been exposed to someone who has recently
returned from China—even though there are more new cases diagnosed every day
outside China than there are in that country. To try to reassure people, two
days ago acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf testified (falsely) to
Congress that coronavirus was no more deadly than flu, but only because he
exaggerated the lethality of flu by 1900 percent. Today, the New York Times
announced that government health officials are banned from giving accurate information
about the epidemic unless they’ve cleared those statements first with the
office of Vice President Pence, which will insert a political spin, at the
expense of public health.
When it’s raining lies, it’s
important to be able to operate an umbrella.
Not everyone can operate an umbrella.
So take precautions.
Wash your hands frequently. Use hand sanitizer. Don’t rub your eyes or nose of
touch your face without washing your hands first. If you’re sick, stay home and
don’t infect others. If you’re an employer, relax your sick day policy and
encourage sick people to stay home. Start making alternate child care arrangements
for when schools and daycare centers close. If you have immune system, heart,
or respiration problems, be especially careful.
And vote.
To do that, you have to register to vote. As I mention in some of my school
visits, in California, you can even pre-register to vote, if you’re 16 or 17,
here:
Ultimately,
when I talk with groups these days, my message is often: be a protagonist.
Protagonists
don’t accept the world they’re born into, they try to make it better.
Protagonists grow and develop, because the circumstances demand it. Protagonists
do not quit, despite setbacks and obstacles and difficult odds.
We face
difficulties ahead, my friends. Be a protagonist. And good luck to us all.
Dean Gloster has an
MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
He is a former stand-up comedian and a former law clerk at the U.S. Supreme
Court. His debut YA novel DESSERT FIRST is out from Merit Press/Simon Pulse.
School Library Journal called it “a sweet, sorrowful, and simply divine debut
novel that teens will be sinking their teeth into. This wonderful story…will be
a hit with fans of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars and Jesse Andrews's Me
and Earl and the Dying Girl.” His current novel is about two funny brothers who
have to team up with their friend Claire to save the world. It has all the
usual Dean Gloster novel ingredients: Death, humor, the question of whether
it’s possible to save someone, a love interest to root for, dysfunctional
parenting, and a slightly off-kilter sensibility. Also a mergers and
acquisitions lawyer dad who is missing 74 percent of his soul.
When Dean is not studying Aikido or downhill ski
racing, he’s on Twitter: @deangloster
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