Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast 153. Ann Bauer on How School Closures Broke Her, and the Cultural Death Spiral of Being "Special"
Ann Bauer is a top-notch personal essay writer, who built a reputation for eloquence and honesty at Salon.com, back in the aughts when the site was still a cultural force. (Sarah was lucky enough to work with Ann back then.) More recently, Ann has become a spitfire on Twitter, where she’s sounded off on COVID-related school closures, the progressive politics of Minneapolis, where she lives, and the various absurdities of our culture-war era.
Nancy and Sarah had a far-ranging and often profound conversation with Ann: About what speaking her mind on social media cost her (professionally, personally), about the potential link between RenFests, polyamory, and Rachel Maddow, and about the son she lost a few years ago, whose autism diagnosis Ann now questions (along with many scientific “certainties”).
Also discussed:
* The ickiness of self-promotion
* “You’re trying to kill me and my family”
* Getting dropped by the Washington Post
* Bruno Bettelheim, somehow
* Writing: It’s all in the execution
* Ann did NOT burn down Minneapolis’s Third Precinct
* The Stations of the Cross for Trump Derangement Syndrome
* “Why are you dressed up as druids and maidens?”
* Big love for Tablet Magazine
* No love for an author who promotes autism as magic that makes you special
* The Cinderella story of Kamala Harris
* The lonely estrangement of the white male in culture
* Writing about your own children: good? bad? both? all?
* What is autism, really?
Plus, people who should not wear leather, Sarah gets sucked into a classic 70s mini series, the coolness of Debbie Harry, and much more!