Editors and Writers and Respect

Snowy Valley Sal has been editing Plotnik's 'Doug's Private Highlight Reel' story for inclusion in the next issue. Plot and SVS have gone back and forth by email, the way they always do, about story issues. Plot likes it that way. It's Sal's newspaper, and she wants things the way she wants 'em. She is also a very good editor, particularly when space issues are involved.

The Great Plotnik, on the other hand, is a writer. He also wants things the way he wants 'em, and that means exactly the way he wrote them. But he isn't always right, because as everyone knows God made editors to piss off writers, but also to make the stories crisper and more readable.

This story -- it's about basketball, and growing older, but it is also marginally about race. Plot has strong feelings about all of these things. He has discovered, in the course of the last ten or twenty years, that white people do not like to talk about race. They don't even want to see the word 'white' or the word 'black.' They like 'harmony' and they like 'diverse' and they like 'Kumbaya My Lord' but they don't like 'F__ You, M___ F___,' even when it's the only possible statement of truth.



Just as in love, and marriage, and career, there is only one real issue in a basketball game: respect. If you're good, you gain respect and if you're not you have to keep earning it week after week after week. Young players always think they're better than older players, because they are. They jump higher. They shoot better. Their muscles talk to their legs and their legs say "Sure."

Older players, like Plotnik, have legs that say "Say what? Jump where?" Older players think about it in terms of brain power and survival. Their one advantage is they remember being young. Young studs have no freaking idea.

Plotnik remembers walking into the gym when he was a teenage Plottie. The game that had the old guys in it was the game Plot and his friends figured they could win. But they didn't, always. The old guys knew every trick in the book. They'd cheat and they'd gouge but they'd also make two passes to Plottie's team's one and the next thing he knew Plot was sitting on the bench and the geezers were still playing.

Race adds a dimension to it -- black basketball players don't fear white basketball players, unless they're really tall. Black guys play harder than white guys, at least on a pick-up game level. They have to. They've always had to. They've got a lot more to prove and not as many places to prove it.

But white people don't want to hear about fighting for respect. They take it as a given. It's not a given. Respect has to be earned and some people have to fight harder to earn it. That's the way it is, whether it fits the story guidelines or not.

Plottie has been an editor too, and when he wears that hat he wants quick, crisp, to-the-point. As a writer he wants truth. Truth and crisp can coexist, but it sure takes a lot of emails.