Self-promotion is the topic today. Two august organizations got took recently--a publishing company and Food Network. I say good enough for 'em and I'll tell you why.
In the first instance, a book was published as a "memoir." First of all, with all the hoopla around Running with Scissors and other "memoirs" by nobodies, don't publishing companies have a clue?People lie when they relate stories about themselves. They aggrandize themselves. They make other people in their lives look at fault. That used to be why memoirs were written by people whose lives you were slightly familiar with. If Helen Hays publishes a memoir that claims that she was once president, we know that's not true. But if she says she hated a co-star that she seemed cordial with, it adds to our understanding of acting. That means she was an even better actress than we thought.
"Memoirs" about people we don't know are novels. We don't read this to get the inside scoop about a movie we liked or another book we read. We read it to be a voyeur. And we either identify with the main character or feel superior to them, just like a novel. So on the face they are fiction for us. And bring out mostly the least desirable aspects of our characters. They encourage us to press our noses to the neighbor's window. We are not educated or uplifted by the "lessons" of these books. We've sated our voyeurism.
And if publishers get raked over the coals for providing a "reality book" that turns out to be neither true nor a book, they ought to be. Publish the damn things as fiction. Or don't publish them at all. Maybe publishing well-written and well-plotted books might be a plan. Just sayin'.
Heard of P. T. Barnum? "There's a sucker born every minute." Just as the publishers swallow these self-serving "memoirs" as true, Food Network apparently hires chefs without a scrap of evidence that what they list on their resumes is true. How can it be harder to get a job at McDonald's than it is to talk your way into a tv show? Because these people or their publicists do a good pitch. They do a good interview.
Apparently, hiring decisions are now based on the applicant's verbal accounting of himself. Hello, people lie. Some people lie about everything. Some people lie only occasionally. But they all lie. Isn't this why spouses can't testify in court? They are thought to have a vested interest. Gee, and ya think a job applicant doesn't? All HR departments ought to own a dog as the final decision maker. Dogs are a better judge of character. It beats this system of believing every person's self=promotion.
By the way, have I mentioned that I joined a gang after being thrown out of the castle by my father, the Duke of Kent?
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