Tuesday, February 22, 2005
A thin veneer of pseudonymity
I think I've more or less admitted in these pages that Oscar Madison is not my real name. What's more, my real superhero identity is not the world's best kept secret. I have some blogger friends who express mild amusement about this. Why do I cling to this thin veneer of pseudonymity? they ask me in so many words. When I say "mild amusement," what I really mean is "mild irritation." My pseudonymity, it seems to me, strikes these folks as a quirk that, while not quite reaching the level of a bad habit, is something they rather I didn't have. Like a facial tic, or a tendency toward scrupulously calculating each person's share of a split dinner tab.
Indeed, two blogistas have recently expressed their... "amusement" on their blogs. I won't link, because you know who you are. One gave me a facetious "award" for my amusingly futile efforts to maintain my pseudonymity. Another thinned my already thin veneer of pseudonymity by providing gratuitous context clues to my identity. I'll be having dinner with these and some other bloggers soon, and it wouldn't surprise me if I suffered further corrosion of this veneer in the form of some indiscretion on a blog, perhaps a revealing photo. At a minimum, I am guessing that – as the only pseudonymous blogger at this blogger gathering – I'll be asked to explain myself. In anticipation of these developments, I explain thus.
I make no secret that I'm a law professor. It's right there in my profile. This means I have students, and a professor image to live up to with my students. Maybe maintaining my image as a law professor isn't as onerous as the image-burden borne by, say, a Supreme Court justice, or the pope. But it's not nothing. In front of my students, I have to be reasonably fair, dignified and mature. This doesn't mean being a phony; it's more a question of emphasizing certain aspects of one's personality and putting others in a closet for the day.
If you read my blog, you know that I use somewhat crude language from time to time. I say "f***" in several posts. Just the other day, in a single post, I used the terms "big butt" and "ass." Indeed, "big butt" was in the title of the post. I have (in my opinion) a somewhat wide-ranging sense of humor that isn't above occasional dips into puerility. Not that I'm Beavis and Butthead, but I did find Beavis and Butthead kind of funny. Also, there's about a 75% chance that I will laugh out loud any time I hear, read, say or think the phrase "bone-in ham."
I don't tell my students that I'm always "the dignified professor" or that I never use crude language. That would be pompous and false, not to mention irrelevant. But I don't use crude language around students. In order to provide an effective learning environment, I feel my students should have a certain level of assurance that I will not make jokes about "big butts" in my classroom or my office. At the same time, I don't want a student to walk up to me and say "bone-in ham." Maintaining an image means drawing a line between your professional persona and your personal life.
Most law-prof bloggers seem content to put their blogs largely or mostly on the professional side of that line. While they don't always blog about law, they seem to refrain from saying stuff that would be inappropriate in a conversation with a student in their offices. Folks like Professor Bainbridge, or the Volokh Conspiracy, or Althouse, or Conglomerate maintain an informal, yet not-unprofessional tone. To varying degrees they trade on their academic affiliations, and would have relatively little ground for complaint if, for example, their law schools posted something about their blogs on the law school web sites. And you don't catch them saying "big butt." Indeed, a Google search "‘big butt' professor bainbridge" yields only a few hits, none of them from his blog.
A couple of professor bloggers write blogs that are almost entirely personal in nature. But I could as easily ask them, "why aren't you pseudonymous"? My thin veneer of pseudonymity may not protect my identity very effectively, but it does give me a way to say "no" if the law school wants to acknowledge my blog officially. And it lets me save face if a student were to come up to me and refer to one of my blog posts with leering familiarity.
My friend J, a linguistics professor, recently explained to me that the word "sheesh" is a "taboo avoidance" device, a way not to say "Jesus Christ" in vain. My pseudonymity is likewise, a form of taboo avoidance. The pseudonym is an announcement that the views expressed on this blog are not those of the classroom professor, that they are part of my personal, not professional professorial, life. They are part of my "bone-in ham" life.
Indeed, two blogistas have recently expressed their... "amusement" on their blogs. I won't link, because you know who you are. One gave me a facetious "award" for my amusingly futile efforts to maintain my pseudonymity. Another thinned my already thin veneer of pseudonymity by providing gratuitous context clues to my identity. I'll be having dinner with these and some other bloggers soon, and it wouldn't surprise me if I suffered further corrosion of this veneer in the form of some indiscretion on a blog, perhaps a revealing photo. At a minimum, I am guessing that – as the only pseudonymous blogger at this blogger gathering – I'll be asked to explain myself. In anticipation of these developments, I explain thus.
I make no secret that I'm a law professor. It's right there in my profile. This means I have students, and a professor image to live up to with my students. Maybe maintaining my image as a law professor isn't as onerous as the image-burden borne by, say, a Supreme Court justice, or the pope. But it's not nothing. In front of my students, I have to be reasonably fair, dignified and mature. This doesn't mean being a phony; it's more a question of emphasizing certain aspects of one's personality and putting others in a closet for the day.
If you read my blog, you know that I use somewhat crude language from time to time. I say "f***" in several posts. Just the other day, in a single post, I used the terms "big butt" and "ass." Indeed, "big butt" was in the title of the post. I have (in my opinion) a somewhat wide-ranging sense of humor that isn't above occasional dips into puerility. Not that I'm Beavis and Butthead, but I did find Beavis and Butthead kind of funny. Also, there's about a 75% chance that I will laugh out loud any time I hear, read, say or think the phrase "bone-in ham."
I don't tell my students that I'm always "the dignified professor" or that I never use crude language. That would be pompous and false, not to mention irrelevant. But I don't use crude language around students. In order to provide an effective learning environment, I feel my students should have a certain level of assurance that I will not make jokes about "big butts" in my classroom or my office. At the same time, I don't want a student to walk up to me and say "bone-in ham." Maintaining an image means drawing a line between your professional persona and your personal life.
Most law-prof bloggers seem content to put their blogs largely or mostly on the professional side of that line. While they don't always blog about law, they seem to refrain from saying stuff that would be inappropriate in a conversation with a student in their offices. Folks like Professor Bainbridge, or the Volokh Conspiracy, or Althouse, or Conglomerate maintain an informal, yet not-unprofessional tone. To varying degrees they trade on their academic affiliations, and would have relatively little ground for complaint if, for example, their law schools posted something about their blogs on the law school web sites. And you don't catch them saying "big butt." Indeed, a Google search "‘big butt' professor bainbridge" yields only a few hits, none of them from his blog.
A couple of professor bloggers write blogs that are almost entirely personal in nature. But I could as easily ask them, "why aren't you pseudonymous"? My thin veneer of pseudonymity may not protect my identity very effectively, but it does give me a way to say "no" if the law school wants to acknowledge my blog officially. And it lets me save face if a student were to come up to me and refer to one of my blog posts with leering familiarity.
My friend J, a linguistics professor, recently explained to me that the word "sheesh" is a "taboo avoidance" device, a way not to say "Jesus Christ" in vain. My pseudonymity is likewise, a form of taboo avoidance. The pseudonym is an announcement that the views expressed on this blog are not those of the classroom professor, that they are part of my personal, not professional professorial, life. They are part of my "bone-in ham" life.
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From the one who gave you an "Oscar" for maintaining the name Oscar: what you say makes sense, except that everyone here sorta kinda knows, and this includes students.
Still, you might offer one huge reason for not using your name: it protects your blog from google searches.
And, if you truly were to ask why I wouldn't want the same, I'd answer because I want to write in a way that I would not be ashamed of. Language is more relaxed on the blog than in the classroom for sure, but it is never to the point where it is so crude as to make my mother blush (she doesn't blush in any event and s*** has sprung forth from her not infrequently, more often than from me actually).
Of course, tonight I will tell you about the time I wished with all my heart that my name was kept out of Ocean. But that was just one time. Whew!
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Still, you might offer one huge reason for not using your name: it protects your blog from google searches.
And, if you truly were to ask why I wouldn't want the same, I'd answer because I want to write in a way that I would not be ashamed of. Language is more relaxed on the blog than in the classroom for sure, but it is never to the point where it is so crude as to make my mother blush (she doesn't blush in any event and s*** has sprung forth from her not infrequently, more often than from me actually).
Of course, tonight I will tell you about the time I wished with all my heart that my name was kept out of Ocean. But that was just one time. Whew!
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