no, I didn’t. goddam it, it’s terrible when people get possessive about a disease. I’ve been a nurse for 23 years and I see this all the time. some people can joke about their illness, some can’t. From my personal experience, the jokers do better than the ones who feel that life has singled them out and sent the shit fairy to deliver a raw deal to them, personally.

I’ve had clinical depression for decades. I’ve pulled a lot of people off ledges.i know this topic well. As a psychiatric nurse for twenty three years I can tell you that mental health professionals often provide far, far more help and sympathy than a patient’s family or friends.

now I’m going to do something I absolutely hate, which is to explain a joke. it shouldn’t need to be done, ever, but if you read the entire piece, the last few paragraphs discuss why it now seems necessary.

first, crows can’t talk. second, they don’t have hands. so, if we proceed from these two givens, a crow that wanted to express itself, couldn’t write a letter or talk to someone. so, since crows have a limited repertoire of responses, shitting on something would be one of their few options.

next, the crow — let’s assume for a minute it really can talk — is saying what it would do. The crow isn’t giving advice. Some might read it that way, but that’s their interpretation. The crow is saying ‘this is what I do’ not ‘you should go do this’. As Lenny Bruce once (rightly) said about sex education, “Knowledge of syphilis is not a directive to go out and get it.”

This is nothing more than a snippet of a conversation from a universe that doesn’t even exist. What’s most problematic to me is how many Medium folks immediately believed that they ‘understood’ the cartoon and had the ‘one and only correct interpretation’, and furthermore decided to jump to the conclusion that I’m a heartless bastard who thinks the mentally ill are not to be taken seriously. That’s really quite a prejudicial mindset, and a very unfair thing to do to me, isn’t it? To read a cartoon ( that the majority of readers loved) and then assume I’m a horrible human being, that takes some really huge balls. That would be like me seeing you yell at your dog on a bad day and assuming you were abusing and torturing it at home.

But then, this is the age we live in, isn’t it? It’s a voyeuristic society where everybody is a snoop, from politicians down to the jerk at the corner bar. Nobody minds their own business because they’re too busy minding everyone else’s and passing judgement. The public doesn’t know how to behave like an audience anymore. Instead they have to be judge, jury and executioner, passing comment and condemnation on anything that doesn’t meet their personal standards. Instead of leaving a concert and saying “I didn’t like it,” they say “How dare they???”

When I was a recording/performing musician, people used to sometimes come up after a show and say ‘Why didn’t you play stuff from the first album? Why didn’t you play that song from the third album, I love that one!” What I always thought was “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that we drove here tonight to play just for you and that you’re paying us. How silly of me to think that I or any members of the band had a say in selecting our repertoire.”

As sure as the sun rises, someone will post a comment to this comment saying how arrogant I am. I’m not arrogant, but I know my limitations. I know my opinion is not always wanted or appreciated and it certainly isn’t required.

I’m not a special person, I know that. I’m a guy drawing cartoons. Period. You don’t like ‘em? Fine. I think comments sections are a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Not everything requires us to respond directly to the author/artist/performer, etc. Personally, I can’t watch movies about kids growing up with abusive, violent alcoholic parents because that’s too close to home for me. But that doesn’t mean I feel compelled to write to a director who makes such a movie and ream them out because the movie was offensive to me.

But as I said, everyone’s a critic now. There’s a difference between opinions and criticism. Criticism takes a single point of view such as ‘this book is confusing’ or ‘this painting is a ripoff of something’ or ‘this band performs music I find offensive’. Then after a point of view is established, the critic makes their case. And they don’t do it by simply complaining and making insults. For quick reference, read a movie review in the New Yorker. An opinion, on the other hand, is a totally subjective reaction to something. “This movie stinks!” is not criticism, it’s an opinion. “This is the best book in the world!” is also an opinion.

And opinions are like bowel movements, everybody has them and we don’t always need to share them.