I can't possibly tell this story alone

Tonight, I let Z stay up to watch the State of the Union address. I remember being forced to watch it as a child, and dying through each excruciating minute, wishing I were playing video games or getting a booster shot. But she was about to go to bed and caught me watching the President getting into his limo from the White House, and then played the civic duty card to stay up late. I told her, “Okay, you can stay up and watch, but this is what we’re doing, so you have to try to listen, alright?” I’ll be damned if she didn’t stick it out to the very end. Not just passively, either. During the hour+ speech, I addressed the following questions from Z:

• Why did they introduce a cabinet?
• What’s a degree and what’s a diploma? (And do I have either or both?)
• Do you think I could be a teacher, too?
• Why did he just talk about Facebook?
• Why are some of the people standing/clapping and others aren’t?
• What is health insurance?
• Who are the people in the black robes?
• Is that guy behind him crying?
• When he says “party” is he talking about…?
• Did you just make that sound about Michelle Obama? That’s the sound you make about the girl on Mythbusters… (I make no apologies, on either count.)

Anyway, the idea is that she actually listened, and asked questions–all of which I took as good signs.

Now, to perform the Star Spangled Banner, Mr. Jimi Hendrix:

Watch Jimi Hendrix – Star Spangled Banner in Music  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I read something today that stopped me cold. Over the years, being socially aware has proven an advantage as a writer, a teacher, and to some extent what it is I do in my “career.” It’s what makes really good comedians really funny–as Chris Rock once noted, is there any person more painfully aware of everything that is going on around them than a comedian? But it’s become far more useless in The Modern World, as The Modern World becomes more shallow–marked by reality TV and 140-character messages than by conversations or considerations of how all of these things should be more connected to us. (Or how we are losing connections to one another, as the case may be.) These are concepts that I’ve been obsessed with since reading Mediated many years ago, but that resurfaced again (in slightly different context) after reading David Brooks’ piece “Social Animal” in the last (Jan. 17) New Yorker (for whatever reason both this week’s issue and last week’s arrived on the same day, so I’ve been backed up). It’s an excerpt from his forthcoming book, and it seriously rocks; so you should read it. This piece centers around the rise of the Composure Class. He writes:

Many members of this class, like many Americans generally, have a vague sense that their lives have been distorted by a giant cultural bias. They live in a society that prizes the development of career skills but is inarticulate when it comes to the things that matter most. The young achievers are tutored in every soccer technique and calculus problem, but when it comes to their most important decisions—whom to marry and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise—they are on their own. Nor, for all their striving, do they understand the qualities that lead to the highest achievement. Intelligence, academic performance, and prestigious schools don’t correlate well with fulfillment, or even with outstanding accomplishment. The traits that do make a difference are poorly understood, and can’t be taught in a classroom, no matter what the tuition: the ability to understand and inspire people; to read situations and discern the underlying patterns; to build trusting relationships; to recognize and correct one’s shortcomings; to imagine alternate futures. In short, these achievers have a sense that they are shallower than they need to be.

He goes on to track a hypothetical member of the Composure Class (Harold) from birth through falling in love, and intersperses the social psychology/science each step along the way. It’s awesome, read it. Now then, Roadhouse is playing on Ion, so I’m gonna go ahead and catch that.