The Art of Editing

 I miss the grand old magazines; you trusted their editors to give you some perspective. 

I miss The Economist, as it once was and is no longer. I realized they had lost it when they abruptly switched from referring to Jean-Marie LePen as “that thug” to “that wily old paratrooper.” He had become a legitimate contender for the French presidency. So I realized they were subject to influence. Then I started noticing a feminist slant. As a comment online has it, “You’d think that a magazine called The Economist would understand something about economics — but only if you hadn’t read The Economist in the last 15 years or so.”

I miss the old Time magazine, which used to have such editorial style. It used to delightfully break the rules. Everyone knew you sold more copies with a photograph on your cover; for years, Time insisted on being artistic, and having a cover illustration. It made its own rules: it introduced, for example, the "interrobang." I realized they had lost it when an article described the Nazis as rejecting progress; as if that was the problem. This was the opposite of the Nazi concept. They were the “progressives,” the “futurists.” This mischaracterization struck me as deeply sinister. They were apparently trying to identify the Nazis with modern conservatives. 

I miss the old Free Press Weekly; now long gone. I expect few will know what I am talking about. I cannot even find it in any archives online. A publication of the Winnipeg Free Press. It was supposedly a farmers’ paper, but the editorial selection was wonderfully quirky. Crazy things like experiments in ESP; but not sensationalist. Not like the Weekly World News. More like listening to Joe Rogan today.

I miss the old Hit Parader. The title is misleading; it was not just a fan magazine. It was musically literate and excellent on insights into the best in current popular music. The editor, whoever it was, just had great taste.

National Geographic: I used to love it in my youth. Many did. At one point I bought all the back issues on CD. Great photography as well as great, informative articles. Now if I pick up an issue it is all politics, and nothing you couldn’t predict without bothering to read.

I miss the old National Lampoon. It was the product of fine creative minds. I assume, as is usually the case, its success depended on one particular editor, and when he moved on, he could not be replaced.

Alberta Report was once great. But the founder and original editor, Ted Byfield, retired from it, and it did not last much longer. Catholic Insight used to be great, but the editor, Father de Valk, retired, and it quickly withered to an online publication of irregular bland articles.

Harrowsmith was once great. But the original editor lost control in a divorce settlement and it soon spiralled downwards into trite politics.

A similar thing happened online with Arts and Letters Daily. It used to be the place to go for everything new in arts, culture, and ideas. Now it’s not worth bothering with.

Drudge Report is another striking online case: it used to be a place you had to visit regularly in case you missed something. It broke many stories. Then something happened. I don’t know what—supposedly Matt Drudge is still editing it. But I suspect he has secretly retired and delegated editorial decisions. Or maybe he just got lazy.

Conclusion: a great managing editor is a rare and invaluable creative talent. Bad editors tend to cover for lack of judgement or imagination by going political. And for some reason, always leftist politics. If their politics are on the right, they remain unpredictable and interesting.

I think the same thing happens in academics.

Violence against Language

I tend to hobnob with other editors on Facebook, and this meme has come around more than once.

This Orwellian attempt to politicize language always alarms me. Especially among editors, who are in a position to impose censorship on what we get to read, just like Winston Smith in the Ministry of Truth.

The use of the passive in this case looks perfectly legitimate. It is entirely likely that the reporter has been given a number for how many women were raped, or how many girls were harassed, and no number for how many men raped or how many boys harassed. It is obviously not the same number. More obviously, it is easy to have a number for how many women are pregnant. It is essentially impossible to know how many fathers are involved.

And there is essentially the same problem for rape or harassment. How do you arrive at a number for how many men rape? You could, if you simply went with the number of convictions for rape, and the number of charges cited in each. Very few men rape. But I wager that is not where the original number came from. It probably came from some feminist source, who wanted to float far higher numbers than this would produce. It probably came from women self-reporting. The figures for boys harassing girls almost certainly did.

So, to get the figures for perpetrators, you could do the same, right? Do a thorough survey, and ask men how many have raped some woman, and boys how many have harassed girls, in the past year?

Does anyone think that number would be accurate? Does anyone thing the two sets of figures would be comparable?

But then, logically, going by self-reporting for women and girls is no more likely to be accurate. We cannot assume that women always tell the truth, and men do not. That’s a deeply sexist view. We are dealing in all these cases with a “he said/she said” situation, with no ability to know the truth.

But here’s the bigger gaping maw of sexism: what about numbers for women raping men, or girls harassing boys? We apparently just start with the initial premise that either that never happens, or if it does, it does not matter. Why do we hear so much about “violence against women,” yet never about “violence against men”? Noting that, in the real world, men are far more likely to be the victims of violence than women. Some surveys suggest this is even true of domestic violence specifically. We are saying only violence against women matters.

What could be more sexist than that?

Editing Cohen

For all his mastery and for all his craftsmanship, Leonard Cohen does from time to time very oddly put a word wrong. Here are two examples:

Go By Brooks

Go by brooks, love
Where fish stare,
Go by brooks,
I will pass there.

Go by rivers,
Where eels throng,
Rivers, love,
I won’t be long.

Go by oceans,
Where whales sail,
Oceans, love,
I will not fail.

A line like “Where fish stare” is what is so great about Cohen. But “Where whales sail” is just not right. Whales do not sail; the image is cartoonish. Aside from that, it lacks the emotional pull of “stare” or “throng.” And easily fixed: “Where whales wail.” Preserves the rhyme, massive alliteration, whales really do wail, and it is emotionally evocative.

Dance Me to the End of Love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love 

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love 

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love 

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love 

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love.

This is a minor tour de force, because there are not many rhymes for “love” in English. That is one of the great things about lyrics. They force the poet to use rhyme. Rhyme is sadly out of fashion in modern poetry, and it is of great value for several reasons. One is that it forces craftsmanship; it is a great challenge to take an almost inevitable rhyme and keep it from looking forced.

Cohen pulls it off here. Including a truly magnificent line using the rhyme, “Show me slowly what I only know the limits of.” In fact, the problem is not with any of the rhymes. It is with that phrase “homeward dove.” You know what he means, but that is not the right adjective. And a better one seems easily at hand: “homing dove.” As in homing pigeon. Why not?

The Right to Choose Your Own Sex

Sorry, folks, I guess I need to vent. The following cartoon came down on an international editors’ Facebook feed.

One of the rules of the list is that political posts are forbidden. And this one was apparently posted by one of the moderators. Nothing political here, it seems. Nothing that could be controversial. This is something all editors, around the world, are now apparently expected to impose on any authors seeking publication. One is not to designate anyone by sex until the person itself [sic] tells you which sex they choose.

True, it is not political, really. It would be more accurate to call it psychotic. This is the definition of psychotic: out of touch with the physical world around you.

Sex is a lot more a part of your biology than just the dangly bits. It is programmed into every cell. It affects the various organs. Female arms are different. Male brains are different. Females experience different symptoms before a heart attack. Men do not ovulate. And on and on.

Just try to extend this logic: if biology is irrelevant, and we may not say what a person is, regardless of biology, until they make a decision themselves on the matter, how can we possibly know, in the first place, who is a person? As opposed, say, to a gorilla or a watermelon? In this case, too, in just the same way, the difference is biological.

Some people have apparently already applied the logic to insist they are really cats or ponies. In Delaware, I read, everyone is now free to choose their own race. Which seems only right: race is far less biologically conditioned than sex.

So much for any justification for “affirmative action” programs.

But if you think that is still okay, you still have not thought it through. Look again at that comic strip. If we have no right to assume that someone is a male or female until they tell us so, even if they are evidently not capable of making that decision for themselves, then we have no right to assume that someone is a person and not a cat until they say so; and then we equally have no right to assume that someone is a cat and not a person until they say so. Until and unless each individual apparent cat, watermelon or wildebeest announces their decision, we can make no assumptions.

It follows that anyone who eats a watermelon should be tried for murder. Or anything else, for that matter. And why even recognize the biological significance of organic chemicals? Anyone who burns gasoline in their car, for example, or melts metal in a mold, or perhaps even moves a stone from here to there, is also a murderer.

The collapse of civilization would be the least of our worries. Within a month or two, all human life ends on earth.

Sure, you can get around this. You could remove all punishments for murder, and make it okay to kill and eat human beings as well. I’m not sure that would be much better.

I think this demonstrates, and not for the first time, that our current professional class, our “elites,” our modern Pharisees, are on the cusp of collapse. They have become too obviously flat-out insane. This present trajectory is not sustainable. It is as though they are crying out for an intervention from someone, somewhere.

Dangerous Editing

Dangerous Uncle Tom faggot.

As a former and perhaps future editor, I am fascinated to see that the original manuscript of Milo Yiannopoulos's Dangerous has been released publicly, complete with editor's comments. For one thing, you get to read the book, a current bestseller, for free. For another, you get great insight into the editorial process at a top US publisher, Simon & Schuster.

Those who dislike Yiannopoulos are claiming that the editorial notes amount to a “takedown” and discredit Yiannopoulos.

My impression is quite different.

Milo's original manuscript looks lazy, granted. Close to being stream of consciousness, without any deep research or anything new for anyone who has listened to many of his public lectures. He needed editing.

On the other hand, this editor seems antagonistic to Milo's basic persona and message. The editorial suggestions seem often wrongheaded. The editor seems to be trying to make the book more bland, which does not serve the author, the publisher, or the reader. It especially does not fit with the Milo brand. It amounts to an act of sabotage.

For example:

Milo writes, “the film was limper than a frat boy's penis at a fat-acceptance rally.” The editor strikes that and replaces it with “the film was boring.” That is plain sabotage; this is the sort of colour people come to a Milo lecture to hear. This is why you want to read Milo instead of some generic writer.

Milo writes, in argument, “there was no reason why the left had to abandon its old blue-collar base.” The editor responds, patronizingly, “The reason was partly that the base abandoned the Democrats during the 1960s because the Democrats voted for civil rights legislation.” This is a tired left-wing talking point that Milo is surely entirely familiar with, and long debunked on the right—for one thing, the Republicans voted more consistently than the Democrats for civil rights legislation in the 1960s. That the editor states it as fact, and assumes Yiannopoulos has not heard this, shows that he has no knowledge of thinking on the right. This makes him fundamentally unqualified to edit a book directed at that readership.

To many of Milo's jokes, the editor just notes something like “unfunny,” or “doesn't land,” or “superfluous.” Not helpful. Yiannopoulos is an experienced comedian who has honed his routines in front of live audiences. It is pure arrogance—or sabotage--for this editor to imagine that he is the better judge of what gags work. One suspects the real problem is that they seem to him to sting—that is, they make Milo's point too well.

In one paragraph, Milo states that the non-unionized working class were attracted to Thatcher and Reagan because of their tough stances against unions. The editor comments “Point out that the working class were attracted to Thatcher and Reagan despite their tough stances against unions?” He simply seems ideologically incapable of grasping the point.

Yiannopoulos says of a certain sort of opponent, “They are the type who will be disappointed by a DNA test that shows they are 99% of European ancestry, because they thought 'I might be something interesting,'” and adds a few other amusing hypothetical examples of limp-wristed leftism. The editor notes “cite examples.” This is like jamming a stick in someone's bicycle spokes as they ride by. Milo is not saying these people do this, but that they are the type who would. Not the same thing, and trying to pedantically document examples of people doing this would murder the joke.

Yiannopoulos then calls gay marriage a “relatively trivial” issue. Quite a reasonable thing to say, surely. The editor will not have this, and rewrites it as “previously ignored.” Comment: “Don't call it trivial.” No further explanation. This is thought-policing at its most blatant.

People like to listen to Milo because he says things in the strongest terms. This is the point of Milo: to poke a finger in the eye of political correctness. People buying his book will be buying it for more of this. Yet this editor objects every time Yiannopoulos uses a particularly strong image or analogy. He is not allowed to compare anyone to Nazis. “Ever.” He is not allowed to call himself a “gay Uncle Tom,” because this is “inflammatory.” And so forth.

Yiannopolos calls his boyfriends “denizens of the dark continent.” The editor strikes this, on the grounds that it sounds like “darkies,” and replaces it with “black men.” Granted that “denizens of the dark continent” is awkward—nothing dark about Africa, and probably Milo's boyfriends to not actually live in Africa. But at least it is far better than the editor's substitution, which is bland, boring and lazy; or else deliberate sabotage. He could at least offer a decent alternative. How about “gentlemen richly endowed with pigment”? “Not prime candidates for the Red-Headed League”? “Of the Sub-Saharan persuasion”? “Ethnically somewhere south of Timbuktu”? If he can't write better than that, or does not care to, how can he presume to tell someone else how to write? He should go into accountancy or something.

I'm not sure whether the editor is incompetent or malicious; but it is an interesting window into traditional publishing. Like just about everything else, in recent decades, editing and book publishing have become hopelessly politically slanted. Traditional publishers and editors have decided that their job is not to serve the public by simply to the best of their abilities ensuring a high quality in books, but to ensure that nothing is published that goes against certain political stances and certain shared class interests. They see themselves as an elite in command.

Among other problems, this tends to mean that no interesting books can any longer be published: nothing that says anything new.

The situation is not as bad as in magazines, or newspapers, or in the rest of the media. The general principle in book publishing is that the author, not the editor, has the final say, and all the publisher can do is pull the book if they disagree too strongly.

But it is, at best, an annoying obstacle course, requiring steady nerves. If, of course, you can get a contract in the first case. Myself currently working on a book for self-publishing, I have actually had freelance designers and printers, who work on contract, refuse to bid on my book because of its apparently right-wing tone. They would probably get drummed out of all the industry cocktail parties. Good thing for them I was not asking them to cater a gay wedding.

For this reason, conventional publishing, like the rest of the mainstream media, is ripening for destruction, indeed, seems to be busy killing itself. It becomes overwhelmingly attractive for someone like Yiannopoulos—or little me--to pull their book from the big houses like Simon & Schuster—he was lucky that they pulled the plug, so he did not have to. And now he can sue.

After all, nobody any longer needs them. Fortunately for the public, fortunately for writers, and unfortunately for the traditional publishers, it is now not just possible, but fairly easy, to bypass all of this. With epublishing and print on demand, there is no need for any big capital outlay to publish—other than the significant time investment of writing the book. Strictly speaking, if you do only ebook format, you can publish for free. Nor is there any need for a big distribution operation. The big problem in the business used to be getting it out to those thousand little bookshops. Now, you can cover most of the field by selling only to Amazon, Chapters, and Barnes & Noble. Yes, author tours and book signings help, but traditional publishers were always notoriously unhelpful with them anyway. It was always mostly up to the author.

I think Yiannopoulos can manage it on his own.