On Privacy

Description: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Transcript:

I was not worried about a loss of privacy, I was worried about a loss of a public space where people’s private lives weren’t always being shoved in your face and technology has made that a lot worse as far as I can tell.  I’m assaulted by other people’s private lives in a whole new set of ways, I cannot shop for groceries without getting their private conversations, but that’s not what people mean when they talk about a loss of privacy.  So I had a very clear notion of here’s a public space, wouldn’t it be nice to only get a composed, polite or even rude but some sort of like acknowledgement that we’re in a public place that we’re not just having our own private lives and there’s some other people having their private lives floating around but there’s some collective notion of like put yourself together a little bit, show that tiny bit of respect for the other human beings around you and not broadcast your private life.  So it was really in that respect, if you look at privacy which I felt was the problem, I felt like this obsession with privacy, I thought just, you know, we live in the growth of the private sector and the shrinkage of the public sector even to make a little pun like that, you know, this is a privatized world.  All of that has gotten a little worse and at a certain point I realized, you know, I wrote that thing during the Clinton/Lewinski misery and felt like all of the commentators had it dead wrong, it was not about Ken Starr’s exposing, you know, Bill and Monica’s private life.  I thought well for god sake he’s the President, I mean what expectation of privacy.  What I was offended by was I don’t wanna hear about these guys, you know, I don’t wanna hear about semen on a dress, it’s like, you know, for god sake, just, you know, excuse me please, I mean there are plenty of places I’d love to hear about semen on dresses but not really, you know, coming out of the White House.  So that inversion where the privacy laws had to do with something being made public rather than being inflicted on me rather than my private stuff being, I don’t care, you know, I really don’t care if people poke around in my stuff, if I never know about it.  I’m a writer, I have an exhibitionist’s streak, I betray my own privacy all the time, I publish all sorts of private facts about myself and not just myself but my friends and my family.  So I’m not worried about that but at a certain point that sense of assault by other people’s, you know, stained underwear when you’re just trying to like walk down a sidewalk or sit in a theater or something.  I realized the best way to manage that was to take out my own cell phone and start talking so, you know, if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.

 

Recorded On: 4/1/08