An Open Letter to Judge John Hodgman

I am sending this open letter to one of my favorite podcasts, Judge John Hodgman, so I thought I’d also share it here with you guys.  The version below is a bit more fleshed out than the one I’m emailing, because a) when you’re writing to busy famous people, brevity is to be commended, but when you’re writing on your own blog you can be as verbose as you like, and b) I can do a lot more crosslinking here on the blog.

While the letter makes more sense if you’re also a fan of the podcast, I think you can probably manage to eke out some amount of enjoyment even if not.  And perhaps it will inspire you to give the show a listen.  There are worse outcomes, certainly.

Anyway, here’s the letter:



Your Honor,

I’ve been listening to your excellent program for a few years now—certainly not your oldest fan, but a faithful one.  One of the main reasons I keep listening is that your decisions are always right ... or nearly always so.  Of course, even a sage of jurisprudence such as yourself is only human, and can occasionally make a mistake.  At only one or two mistakes, I could overlook them.  However, some months ago, the number of such misstatements (all completely unintentional, I’m sure) reached a staggering three, and I felt I could no longer remain silent.

#1: Why all the hate for electronic cigarettes?  I’ve written about this on my blog before, but the executive precis is, e-cigarettes got me off smoking—and off nicotine altogether—after over 25 years of frying my lungs.  Now I’m consuming nothing more than water vapor and I still have to listen to people giving me shit about it.  It’s a little disheartening, to be honest.  I just cannot fathom what the complaint is: I’m not exposing you to second-hand smoke, nor even to secondhand nicotine.  Are you complaining about my second-hand water vapor?  Well, I hate to tell you, but you were breathing that anyway, even before I pulled out my e-cig.  I just feel that, instead of being congratulated on making a positive change for myself and my health, I’m being told I’m still scum because ... well, I’m not entirely sure why.  But I’m definitely still scum: lots of people have told me so.  Your Honor is not alone in this attitude, of course.  Many other people whom I respect greatly have also taken this stance.  Perhaps it’s just cool to hate on vaping, like dissing Nickelback or Keanu Reeve’s acting ability.  But Your Honor is generally not a joiner, so I’m not sure what the source actually is.

#2: I was also pretty discouraged by your discussion with your bailiff about how all us poor people in the tech business are forced to “dress down” because that’s the social norm in our industry.  Do you really think that I’m waking up every day and going, man, I wish I could tie a strip of cloth around my neck and be half-strangled all day, but I guess I’ll put on these horrible jeans with the holes in them so I can blend in with all the other guys at work?  Is it perhaps more likely that people who prefer to be comfortable in their clothing rather than fretting over how good the clothes look tend to gravitate towards jobs where fashion sense is not used a substitute for competence?  I know that you and the bailiff are natty dressers (and purveyors of fine clothing, even, in the bailiff’s case), but this discussion somehow reminded me of what a wise man once said about the difference between hipsters and nerds:

The definition, as we have discussed before, of a hipster, more or less, is someone who has enthusiasms like a nerd, but uses those enthusiasms to gain—to cudgel others with their taste, and to gain status because you like the wrong thing, or you don’t know what the right thing is, or you learned about something the wrong way, ’cause you found out about it once it became popular or whatever.  Whereas a nerd is someone who also has enthusiasms, but just wants to share the enthusiasms.

    — John Hodgman, “All Laws Are Off”

  
I never thought anyone could accuse Your Honor of being a hipster, but let’s just say I felt a bit like a clothes nerd when I listened to that episode.

#3: The coolest Delta fraternity brother is Otter?  C’mon man: D-Day.

I do continue to enjoy the show, however, and have even started sending a (very small) monthly stipend to Maximum Fun (which is something NPR never managed to convince me to do), because you were right when you pointed out that when artists you love do work that you appreciate, you need to show your support for that.  You’re right most of the time, really.  And I want to support that.