Selling our soul to the Bundys and other bullies

We’re missing the point.

When the not-guilty verdict came down against the Bundy Brigade for their takeover of a federal wildlife sanctuary in Oregon, I was outraged. What gave these self-righteous yahoos the right to appropriate my land … and get away with it?

Yes, it is my land. As a taxpayer, I own that place, and so do you. It felt as if Ammon and Ryan Bundy and their cohorts had come into my living room, plopped themselves down on my sofa, grabbed a beer out of my refrigerator (well, I don’t actually have any beer in my ’fridge, but if I did …) and spent the next 41 days violating what’s supposed to be my space. Freedom of assembly, my ass.

But, as it turns out, a lot of people were upset at the decision for a different reason. The jury had just condoned what prosecutors described as an armed seizure of property that didn’t belong to them. They’d disrupted a wildlife refuge, which is supposed to be there to protect wildlife from guys like these – goons with guns who don’t have the decency to respect other people’s (or animals’) rights.

Much of the hue and cry on social media, however, wasn’t over any of this. It was over how the Bundy Bunch had gotten off because of perceived white privilege.

There’s no doubt that deep racial inequities exist in this country, that those inequities have been reflected in court decisions, and that people have been guilty of grave – sometimes fatal – in justices as a result.

But I’ll reiterate: that’s not the point here. This case wasn’t about race. It wasn’t about someone being pulled over for “driving while black” and being beaten senseless without provocation. It wasn’t about a young man being shot for wearing a hoodie and having the audacity to purchase a bag of Skittles at a convenience store.

Those cases do have something in common with the Bundy Bunch’s outrageous acquittal, but that something isn’t race.

It’s bullying.

And that’s the point.

Glorifying the inglorious

To focus on the Bundy case as an example of white privilege is to miss the fundamental issue at play here – an issue that is ultimately more dangerous to our society than any racial divide: the tolerance for, and perversely romanticized celebration of bullying.

Like racism, this isn’t anything new.

Our culture has long been fascinated with outlaws, from the Dalton Gang to Jesse James. Los Angeles Times reporters Courtney Sherwood and Kirk Johnson wrote of the Bundy occupation: “It had a Wild West quality, with armed men in cowboy hats taking on federal agents …”

Romantic? Tell that to the people those Wild West outlaws gunned down, whose property they stole, whose rights they trampled on. There is a law west of the Pecos these days, and there’s a reason for that: The alternative is chaos.

We love it when people “stick it to the man,” even if those people lack the most basic sense of morality or decency; even if they would turn against us at the drop of a cowboy hat if it suited their own self-interest. If we think Jesse James robbed trains and stagecoaches to “stick it to the man,” we’re deluding ourselves. He did it to take something that belonged to someone else by force. That’s what bullies always do.

One of our presidential candidates is a vainglorious bully who has bragged about his ability to sexually assault women and threatened to throw his opponent in jail. Kissing women without permission. Grabbing their genitalia. All because he was a star and could do whatever the hell he wanted.

The other candidate, meanwhile, has dismissed and demeaned women who accused her own husband of sexual abuse, calling their charges a “bimbo eruption.” She said that, if given the chance, she’d “crucify” one of those accusers in front of a jury and that, regarding another, “We have to destroy her story.” Too bad for her that a stained blue dress told the kind of story that didn’t come out in the wash.

Two bullies, nominated by we the people. This is the problem, America, and it goes far deeper than racism, as entrenched and ugly as that most certainly is. It goes to the core of who we are: a people who, on the one hand, celebrate our heritage as a “nation of laws” built on a Constitution and who, on the other, cheer on and glorify those who flout those laws and that Constitution when we happen to be pissed off.

Forcing our issues

Again, this is not a matter of race. It’s a matter of using force, rather than dialogue, to resolve our differences. To take what we believe “belongs to us” without regard to anyone else’s rights.

In November 2015, Black Lives Matter protesters entered the Dartmouth College library, and started shouting things like “Fuck you, you filthy white fucks” and “Fuck you, you racists” to the students trying to study there. According to the Dartmouth Review, protesters shoved people around and even pinned one woman against a wall, calling her a “filthy white bitch.”

Is racism a legitimate grievance? Of course it is. But the Bundy Brigade thought they had a legitimate grievance, too – the point being that, no matter how righteous you think your cause might be, it doesn’t justify you taking something that belongs to someone else, whether that something be property, self-respect, equal opportunity or merely the right to live in peace. If you do that, you’re not an activist, you’re a bully, regardless of your gender, the color of your skin, your sexual orientation or your country of birth.

We don't choose things like race, gender, orientation or birthplace. They are what they are, and no one should be condemned because of them. But we do have a say over our own actions – and whom we glorify as our heroes/role models. Jesse James? The Bundy Brigade? People who push others around in college libraries? Politicians who think they can just “take what they want” or intimidate/shame their victims into shutting the hell up?

Is our country truly a nation of laws that respects civil rights and champions human dignity? Or are we just a nation of pissed-off crybabies who want what we want when we want it, and to hell with everyone else? A collection of bad neighbors who shout across the fence at one another and plot home invasions if we think that fence was placed a few inches on the wrong side of the property line? A motley crew of landlocked petty pirates – of bullies and their enablers?

These are the questions we must ask ourselves, and our futures depend on how we choose to answer them. Starting now.

Trump’s playbook: Hail Marys and forfeits

On Nov. 23, 1984, a young quarterback from Boston College threw a pass that will be forever engrained in the minds of college football fans.

Trailing by four points and down to his last play, Doug Flutie dropped back to pass, scrambled around, and heaved a Hail Mary pass from his own 37-yard line. Flutie was small for a quarterback – just 5 feet, 9 inches – and he had already thrown the ball 45 times during the game. Throwing into a 30 mph wind, there was no way he could get the pass all the way to the University of Miami’s end zone.

Or so Miami’s defensive backs thought: Three of them moved up in front of the goal line, positioning themselves to intercept Flutie’s pass … which instead sailed over their heads and into the waiting arms of Boston College receiver Gerard Phelan.

The touchdown gave Boston College a 47-45 win on national television, and Flutie went on to win the Heisman Trophy, presented each year to the best player in college football.

After Flutie graduated, he had a chance to sign a contract with the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL, but he chose a different course. There was, at the time, a second professional football league: the United States Football League (USFL), which played its games in the spring, and the man who owned that league’s New Jersey Generals franchise was offering Flutie an $8.3 million contract.

That man was real estate tycoon Donald Trump – the same man who would win the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 2016. He was relatively unknown then, outside of the Eastern Seaboard, and ownership of the Generals catapulted him to national prominence.

Flutie’s folly?

Why did he sign Flutie? Despite his college success, pro scouts tend to shy away from quarterbacks shorter than about 6-foot-2. They have a harder time seeing over the line, and they often have to scramble around a lot – as Flutie did on that Hail Mary play – to get a good look downfield. Seattle’s Russell Wilson, who’s 2 inches taller than Flutie, has been one of the few quarterbacks shorter than 6 feet tall to have success as a pro.)

The Generals’ coach at the time, Walt Michaels, wanted to draft Randall Cunningham, an African-American quarterback out of UNLV who stood 6-3 and was a better quarterback than the scrambling Flutie. He would go on to throw for 207 touchdowns and run for 35 more, winning the Most Valuable Player award twice in a 16-year NFL career.

Flutie, who wound up throwing more interceptions than touchdown passes in just one season for the Generals, only played more than seven games in an NFL season five times, although he did put up some big numbers during eight seasons in the Canadian Football League.

But Flutie had what Trump was looking for (and Cunningham lacked). He had golden-boy looks – think Tom Cruise or Steve Garvey – a marketable name and a reputation for doing the impossible: three things Trump saw in himself. And if you get Donald Trump to look in a mirror, you’ve got his attention, just as surely as if he were the evil queen from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Trump’s own golden boy looks have faded to orange since then, but he’s defined himself based on those other two qualities he shared with Flutie back in 1984. He’s put his name on everything from steaks to casinos, and he has repeatedly tried to do the impossible.

Far more often than not, he’s failed.

Six bankruptcies related to his resorts and casinos, and a portfolio littered with bad ideas and shuttered businesses. Trump Airlines. Trump casinos. Trump Magazine. Trump Mortgages. Trump University. Trump Vodka. Trump the Game.

Using the USFL

And then there was the USFL. The league had been founded in 1983 on a business model geared toward meeting a demand for football during the spring, after the NFL had completed its season, and using a salary cap to operate on a tighter budget. It made some sense: Don’t go head to head with the big boys, who have more money, an established reputation and a huge fan base. Instead, build your own brand in a different niche.

But some of the league’s owners soon abandoned the league’s frugal model in a race for big-name players, signing them to outsized “personal services” contracts as a way around the salary cap. They paid the price for opening up their wallets when revenues failed to keep pace with salary demands.

About the same time Flutie was making a splash during his senior year at Boston College, Trump was urging USFL owners to abandon the other major component of their business plan and throw a Hail Mary pass of their own by ditching the spring-season format and going head-to-head with the NFL in the fall.

With the red ink already rising on their ledgers, the league was hardly in a position to mount a realistic challenge to the sport’s burgeoning behemoth, so Trump hatched a plan to sue the NFL under U.S. antitrust laws, claiming it was acting as a monopoly.

A jury did indeed find in favor of the USFL, but it also found that the league had switched to a fall schedule, not in order to save itself, but to force a merger with the NFL. The result? The jury awarded the USFL just $1 in damages (trebled to $3 under rules applied to antitrust lawsuits), effectively putting the league – and Trump’s team – out of business.

His Hail Mary had fallen flat. As with his bankruptcies, he had no choice but to forfeit the game.

Shifting the blame

Trump, however, blamed the league’s other owners, writing in The Art of the Deal, “If there was a single key miscalculation I made with the USFL, it was evaluating the strength of my fellow owners.”

Trump’s handling of the USFL became the template for his strategy in business and in life: Promise great things, throw a Hail Mary pass, and hope it works. Then, when it falls incomplete and the clock runs out, blame the referee. Or the other team. Or your fans. Or anybody, except yourself for taking such an outrageous risk in the first place.

No matter how many times we might enjoy watching replays of Doug Flutie throwing that magical pass against Miami, he only did it once. Trump has had successes, but with the exception of TV’s “The Apprentice,” they’ve all been in a single arena: real estate – an industry in which he’s also seen plenty of failure even though his father paved the way for him with both capital and presumed know-how.

Trump knows something about real estate. But he doesn’t know anything about vodka, or universities, or airlines, or football.

Or governing.

The thrill of the hunt

When he entered the 2016 presidential race, Trump was just launching another Hail Mary pass in a game he knows nothing about. All that’s important to him is that it’s a game. “It’s all about the hunt,” he was quoted as saying in Timothy O’Brien’s 2005 book TrumpNation, “and once you get it, it loses some of its energy. I think competitive, successful men feel that way about women.”

It there’s a clearer way of saying that women are a piece of meat without coming right out and using those words, I don’t know what it is.

The quote not only speaks volumes about Trump’s predatory attitude toward women, as reflected in the 2005 tape from Access Hollywood that sent his presidential campaign floundering, it says something even bigger about his attitude toward life. It’s not just women who are trophies; it’s everything. When Trump says he loves women, he’s not lying; he just “loves” them in the same way Teddy Roosevelt loved bagging a lion, an elephant or a black rhino. He “loves” business associates and voters the same way. No wonder he has so few close friends.

It’s noteworthy that his sons have taken after him in the literal sense, becoming big-game hunters.

Trump’s obsession with the hunt explains why he starts ventures that quickly fail: He has neither the patience nor the inclination to see them through to the end, whether they be a marriage, an investment in a football team or an airline. He loses interest, and he’s on to the next thing. He’s like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan: so consumed with conquest that he undermines any opportunity for lasting success, because he doesn’t really care about it.

Hail Mary presidency

Other than real estate and “The Apprentice,” he’s seldom stuck with anything long enough to make it work. Now imagine that attitude applied to the presidency. If he were to be elected and follow his familiar pattern, he would quickly lose interest and turn his attention to other things … then blame others for his – and the nation’s – failures, wash his hands of the whole mess and go on to his next big promise. His next Hail Mary.

Or maybe he’d use the office of the presidency as the platform to launch his next campaign for conquest, whether it be a war, an overhaul of the Constitution, an assault on civil liberties or his already-stated objective of building a $12 billion wall … and making Mexico pay for it. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell whether his last name is really Trump or Quixote.

But it doesn’t matter how outlandish his goals seem or how impossible. Remember, he’s all about throwing up Hail Marys to prove he can do the impossible. And this penchant is precisely what makes him so dangerous: It actually behooves him, for the sake of his ego, to create crises so he can set the stage for the adrenalin rush he gets if he manages to solve them. The more desperate the situation looks, the better.

Forget me not

This helps explain why Trump isn’t about keeping promises or taking responsibility for his failures. He famously never apologizes, because he’d be doing it all the time – and because he’s too busy looking in the mirror and talking about how wonderful he is.

And he’s so convinced of it, people believe him.

We still remember Doug Flutie, even though he never won a Super Bowl and spent much of his NFL career as a backup, because he threw that crazy pass against Miami and it worked.

“Without the Hail Mary pass, I think I could have been very easily forgotten,” Flutie would say later.

If we watch that pass over and over again and ignore his NFL career, we might come to believe that Flutie was the best quarterback ever to play the game. And if we listen to Donald Trump tell us he can “make America great again” often enough, we might believe that, too.

That’s what he’s counting on. And once we accept his proposal, the hunt will be over. We’ll be just another trophy for his wall – mounted, stuffed and displayed for all to see. Except no one will be looking at us anymore, because Trump demands that everyone look at him. We’ll be forgotten on the sidelines of history, just like the old New Jersey Generals, while Trump is off on the prowl, looking for his next conquest.

In any hunt, you have to have a quarry. We’re it. And if Trump bags us, we might as well be dead meat.

Just accept that you can't know what I'm feeling

“I know what you’re going through.”

No, you don’t.

“This will get better in time.”

Then give me an injection of that shit now … but not too much: I don’t want to overdose and end up dead.

“It’s God’s will.”

How do you know? Are you divine? Sorry, but I can’t see the halo over your head. And if you follow up with “God works in mysterious ways,” that just goes to show you don’t understand it. And if you don’t understand, you can’t help.

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Tell that to the victims of the Holocaust. Or the indigenous people who have been slaughtered around the world. Or a cancer victim. Or the family of an Alzheimer’s patient. Yes, everything happens for a reason, and that “reason” is simple: People can be heartless; life can be cruel. I don’t need to be reminded of that, thank you, especially not in my present state of mind.

Maybe platitudes help some people. I don’t know. I can’t get inside other people’s heads and feel what they’re feeling – which is, really, precisely the point here.

Yes, you may have gone through something similar to what’s happening to me. Maybe your experience was, by some objective standard, “worse” than mine. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live through the Holocaust, the Inquisition, the purges conducted throughout history in the name of power, gold, religious or racial “purity,” egoism. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a loved one to war, or to an accident involving a drunken driver. All I know is what I feel right now.

And you don’t. You just don’t.

I could tell you, philosophically speaking, that no two people go through exactly the same experiences, and that no two people react the same way, because even though we’re all human, we’re not cookie-cutter automatons with the same perceptions, emotional triggers, etc., etc. We’re all unique combinations of DNA, neurons, protoplasm and whatever else makes us … individuals.

But that’s head knowledge. It’s only good so far as it goes – which isn’t very far when it comes to personal pain (and all pain is, in the end, deeply personal). It doesn’t really matter to me when I’m in the midst of it. What matters is what I feel, and no matter how much you and I might have in common, no matter how precisely I communicate, you can’t possibly feel exactly what I’m feeling in this present moment. You can’t even know what I’m feeling. In the midst of great pain, definitions are meaningless.

And that’s why platitudes don’t work. They don’t help. Because they represent a presumption that you know what I’m feeling – that you can define it and that you somehow understand “how this works.” You don’t. I don’t even understand how it works, and I’m going through it. What you may (or may not) understand is what you went through, and I don’t presume to understand that. Because I’m not you.

No matter how close we may be, I’m not inside your mind. I’m not experiencing your pain. The only pain I can feel is what’s inside me, even if I’m in pain over your situation, that’s still my pain, not yours.

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone.” — Hunter S. Thompson

He was right. We all experience our emotions – fear, pain, hope, joy – alone. I can express them to you, but you cannot truly share them. You can experience your own feelings called “fear” or “pain” or “hope” or “joy,” but you cannot feel mine the way I feel them. Because you are not me.

Maybe people use platitudes because they want to help. Or because they don’t want to feel helpless. Maybe your suffering is in some way inconvenient to them, or perhaps they feel threatened by it. Or maybe the realization that we are all, at the end of the day, truly alone in the feelings we experience is just too scary to acknowledge. The realization that I’m all alone is, indeed, one of the most frightening things I’ve ever faced.

I’m not wallowing in this. I’m forcing myself to face up to it, so I can figure out how to deal with it. I’m not there yet; I’m a long way from it, and I’m not sure whether I’ll ever get there. But you don’t have a clue what it is to feel these things the way I feel them. You just don’t.

So please acknowledge that. Don’t give me platitudes or pat answers. Don’t say you know how I’m feeling, because you don’t. Don’t try to reassure me. Recognize that there might not be a damned thing you can do to help me or improve my situation; that it’s all on me. Believe me, I there’s a part of me that wishes you could help, because I sure could use it. But no one can help me feel – and even if they could, I wouldn’t wish some of the feelings I’ve endured on the worst of my enemies (thankfully, I don’t have too many of those).

The best thing you can do for me may be the most difficult: Put away the platitudes and have the courage to acknowledge my aloneness – even if it forces you to acknowledge your own. That’s the only way any sort of understanding between us can begin.

Police union letter puts pride before public safety

You’re butthurt by something someone said, by a pair of socks, so now you’re going to put your own bruised dignity ahead of public safety? Seriously?

I understand why police officers are offended by Kaepernick’s socks (which depicted cartoon pigs wearing police hats). But that doesn’t give them the right to jeopardize public safety.

As a journalist, I could get offended by a lot of what’s said about people in my profession. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop covering newsworthy stories involving those who make those comments. That’s what I’m paid to do, and it’s what I’m expected to do, ethically speaking.

In simple terms, you do your job. Period. That’s professionalism.

Professional conduct is even more crucial when it comes to public safety. How will the officers in the Santa Clara police union feel if they refuse to show up work a 49ers game and someone gets assaulted on what should have been their watch?

I know how I’d feel. Pretty damned guilty.

Yet this is exactly what the Santa Clara police union is doing. In a letter to the 49ers, the union stated, “If the 49ers organization fails to take action to stop this type of inappropriate behavior it could result in police officers choosing not to work at your facilities. The board of directors of the Santa Clara Police Officer’s Association has a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their working environments free of harassing behavior.”

“Harassing behavior”? From one guy in uniform on the sidelines? If this isn't an overreaction, I don't know what is. Kaepernick's not trying to foment a riot here, and even if he were, does anyone really think that his comments will cause a mass public uprising against police working at Levi's Stadium? Get real. Fans are far more likely to vent their anger at the referees, and when's the last time an official was assaulted at an NFL game?

According to a report by NBCBayArea, about 70 officers volunteer to work these games as security personnel, but about half of them may not show up at the 49ers' next game, on Dec. 12 – despite having agreed to do so.

Regardless of how you view Kaepernick’s behavior, he didn’t issue any threats (of harassment or anything else) toward police officers. Nevertheless, the union responded by issuing a threat of its own toward the 49ers. Worse, when union president Frank Saunders was told officers from other police forces might be hired instead, his response was to warn that such an action might run afoul of his union's contract. 

In other words: If we don't want to do the job, we'll do our best not to let anyone else do it, either.

Imagine a doctor refusing to treat a cardiac patient because he works for a company that – for instance – discriminates against women. Even if the doctor were off-duty, he or she would certainly treat someone in severe distress. And there would be no question of trying to keep another doctor from intervening because (gasp) that doctor didn't belong to a union.

Or imagine a gay firefighter walking away from a burning warehouse because it belonged to company that employed a single homophobic worker. Just one. That’s unthinkable. Yet it’s akin to what the police union is doing here in threatening to punish the 49ers for the behavior of a single employee. But who’ll really be punished if they fail to show up for work and a crime is committed? It won’t be Kaepernick or even the 49ers, it will be the victim of that crime – some individual who may even have a ton of respect for the police.

But that shouldn’t matter. The police are sworn to protect everyone, not just people they happen to like – or even people who happen to like them. In a way, their reaction to Kaepernick bolsters his point: Wasn’t he saying that some officers are more concerned with their own prejudices than they are with doing their job properly?

Kaepernick’s behavior shouldn’t enter into the equation because, no matter how offensive you may find his speech, it’s not against the law. In fact, it’s protected, so the police should be protecting his right to express himself – even if they find that expression offensive – not potentially putting others at risk because they don’t like what he said.

To his credit, the Santa Clara police chief issued a statement saying exactly this: “As distasteful as his actions are, these actions are protected by the Constitution. Police officers are here to protect the rights of every person, even if we disagree with their position. Police officers have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution.”

The chief, Michael Sellers, emphasized that “the safety of our community is our highest priority.” As it should be.

Apparently some in the police union don’t agree – which supports the point Kaepernick's critics have been making: Don’t make blanket statements that all cops are jerks. Such statements are flat-out wrong. There are good cops, and there are bad cops. There are those who act with professionalism and integrity, and there are those who don’t. The decision on whether or not to show up for work at 49ers games will go a long way toward identifying who’s who.

Note: Paragraphs 9-12 of this entry have been updated with additional information since the initial post.

10 Ways to Recognize a Single-Tasker

Society loves the multitasker, that talented individual who can juggle a dozen projects at once without letting a single one of them touch the ground. It’s impressive and entertaining to watch.

But what about that person’s polar opposite, the single-tasker?

The single-tasker isn’t nearly as much fun to watch. She might cloister herself away in her room, working for hours, days or months on a novel or musical composition. He might spend the entire party talking to a single person he finds fascinating, tuning everyone else out as white noise. How boring is that? Especially when the multitasker is over there regaling half the room with tales of a dozen different adventures or demonstrating how to walk, chew gum and rub his belly simultaneously.

We don’t celebrate the single-taskers as much because we don’t see them in action – and they like it that way. They don’t want to be seen “performing” their tasks, because they aren’t performers. They want to be judged by the end result – and, for the most part, left alone so they can produce it. Once they’re satisfied and ready to unveil it, you’ll be impressed, they suspect. And far more often than not, they’re right.

Single-taskers are those focused individuals who may not be flashy, but they get things done … as long as you give them the space to create and to engage. Many of them are introverts. Some are writers, painters, sculptors, musicians. How do you recognize a single-tasker? Here are some clues to look for.

1. They hate being interrupted. Single-taskers aren’t intrinsically smarter (or less intelligent) than anyone else; they rely on their focus to get things done. Interrupt them, and you’ve neutralized their secret weapon. If the phone’s always ringing or the dog needs to be let out or the boss has called another impromptu meeting, it can stifle the single-tasker’s productivity.
2. They need to get in “the zone” to work their magic. This is why interruptions are so frustrating. Each time one occurs, it breaks the spell, and getting back there might not be easy – especially if they’re continually worrying about when the next interruption might occur.
3. They both love and hate the details. Single-taskers thrive on investigating the minutiae when they’re involved in a project, because they know that attention to detail will make it come alive. On the other hand, they hate dealing with paperwork and other bureaucratic intrusions because these are just another form of (you guessed it) interruption that takes them away from what fascinates them.
4. They prefer one-on-one interactions. They don’t like conference calls or mingling. Chances are, if they’re persuaded to show up for a party, they’ll seek out the person they find most interesting and spend the next three hours in conversation with him or her. The rest of the room might as well not exist. They might appear snobbish or unapproachable if you’re not the “chosen one,” but once you capture their attention, they’ll be riveted by you.
5. They don’t like demands. They might look like prima donnas, because if you start trying to tell them what to do, they’re likely to withdraw. But a demand is, to the single-tasker, a red flag – a warning signal. Demands travel in packs, and the demanding person is their leader.  When one rears its head, others are likely to follow. Think of the boss who hands out one assignment, then changes course midstream and demands something else instead. Or, worse, drops a second task in the single-tasker’s lap before the first one can be completed. This may not be the single-tasker’s worst nightmare, but it’s right up there. If you want to engage a single-tasker, pique his interest. Ask, don’t demand. Invite, don’t compel. Then you’ll get his attention.
6. They prefer to prioritize. One thing at a time, please. The most important (or, to the creative single-tasker, the most inspiring) task should always come first. If it doesn’t, the single-tasker might become discouraged and not get much done at all.
7. They don’t have patience for haggling, bargaining or endless brainstorming. They see such activities as wasting energy on details when they’d much rather be getting to the substance of the matter. If they’re buying a car, they don’t want to spend hours sparring with a salesman who’s adept at mind games and manipulation. They want to get behind the wheel and start driving. If they’re considering a project, they don’t want to spend a whole afternoon in some meeting that’s filled with dead ends and tangents, they want to get down to work. They're open to compromise, they just don't want to waste time spinning their wheels.
8. They look like loners, and they might appear standoffish, but that’s not really accurate. They love to be alone, but alone with … their thoughts, their project, that one special person. It’s not that they don’t want to engage. Precisely the opposite. They just don’t feel comfortable engaging with more than one thing or person at the same time, so if you aren’t that one thing or person, they’re likely to appear cold or distant.
9. They hate being bombarded with choices. Having the freedom to choose is a good thing, and single-taskers value that, to be sure. But they’re far more comfortable with A-or-B choices than they are with considering a slew of varied options, each with its own potential upsides and pitfalls. It’s not that they’re simple minded. Actually, it’s the opposite: They like to analyze things so thoroughly that being confronted with several options at once can send them into overload.
10. They care more about results than appearances. If they appear rude or aloof to “the in crowd” at a party, it’s a price worth paying to engage with someone they find interesting. If they seem stubborn or inflexible, it’s probably because they just don’t want to get into an endless back-and-forth over issues they believe could be resolved with a quick exchange.  If their space is cluttered and messy but they’re making progress on a project they value, that’s life. The results will be worth it, they tell themselves. And, often, they are. 

In memory of David H. Provost, father, mentor and friend

I stood in the imaginary batter’s box at one end of the back yard in Woodland Hills, waiting for the pitch. There were imaginary baserunners, too. And imaginary fielders. Just beyond the “outfield fence,” in the next house over, lived a real live baseball player, Bill Buckner, then at the beginning of his career with the L.A. Dodgers.

But on this field, in our back yard, it was just me, my dad, and a Whiffle ball. He’d come home after work – a day working as the dean of new program development in the Cal State University Chancellor’s Office bracketed by an hour or more in rush hour traffic each way. And he’d play Whiffle ball with his only son in that back yard.

Sometimes, he’d be too tired, and looking back, I can’t really blame him. A man in his forties in a high-pressure job doesn’t always have enough energy to get out of the car, walk through the house and out back to engage in a game of Whiffle ball – or ping pong, a game he taught me how to play. He even built a basketball court, complete with a permanent, regulation 10-foot hoop and a square concrete slab on which to bounce that ball until your hands were caked with dust the consistency of chalk.

I never played competitive basketball, or baseball or, for that matter, ping pong, but my dad gave me the opportunity to try all of them on for size – this 6-foot-8 giant of a man whose own foray into competitive sports consisted, to my knowledge, of some recreational basketball in Australia in the early 1950s, where he did his postgraduate studies. He was so much taller than the rest of the people on the court that he was able to score almost at will in one game and wound up with more points than everyone else combined.

Wilt Chamberlain, eat your heart out.

Fan

But mostly, Dad enjoyed sports from the stands – or in front of the TV. In fact, his love of sports went back long before the age of television: He vividly remembered listening to the 1939 Rose Bowl as an 8-year-old boy and how thrilled he’d been to hear USC score the winning touchdown with a minute left to beat Duke 7-3. It was the only touchdown the Blue Devils had allowed all season, and Dad was a USC fan the rest of his life.

How big a fan? In 1974, we were watching the Trojans play archrival Notre Dame on TV, and Dad was so upset he stormed out of the house when the Irish took a 24-0 lead. I don’t know where he went, but shortly after he left, the Trojans scored a touchdown to make it 24-6; then star running back Anthony Davis returned the second-half kickoff for another score.

“Dad, you’re missing this!” I remember saying aloud, pacing back and forth in front of the TV (just as he would do), waiting for him to come home as USC scored another touchdown, then another, then yet another. By the time he got back, the Trojans had scored 35 points in the third quarter and led 41-24 on their way to a 55-24 victory. Dad had missed the best part of one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.

Dad took my mom and me to half a dozen Dodger games each year, and one of them was the last game of the 1977 season. That one was special because we got to see Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run of the year, the first time four players from the same team (Ron Cey, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith being the others) all hit 30 or more home runs in a season. And I got to see it, thanks to my dad.

We also saw Fresno State’s football team beat Bowling Green twice in the California Bowl. And we got to see the men’s basketball team dismantle fifth-ranked UNLV 68-43 in perhaps the greatest basketball game ever played at Selland Arena in downtown Fresno.

Mom, as a rule, didn’t enjoy sports too much; she’d go off and do her own thing while Dad and I were watching football in the family room. But when we moved back to Fresno in 1978 and the basketball team became a regional powerhouse, she caught the bug and began rooting for Boyd Grant’s Bulldogs as hard as either one of us.

All three of us were part of the famous "Red Wave" of Fresno State fans who packed Selland Arena (aka Grant's Tomb) to watch the Bulldogs' suffocating defense dismantle one foe after another. 

One year, Dad and I went to the mall and bought Mom a custom red T-shirt with metallic lettering that read “I love Mitch Arnold,” in honor of her favorite player. He kept it in the closet of the house where I grew up long after she passed away.

Partner

Mom and Dad were married for 39 years until she died of a stroke on Jan. 9, 1995, just shy of her 63rd birthday. Stricken by polio as a child, she’d been told she’d never walk again, but not only did she walk – despite being almost fully paralyzed on the right side of her body – she earned a degree from UCLA and then went to work at Douglas Aircraft in Southern California, which is where she met my father.

He asked her to marry him on the spur of the moment when they were smooching in the car, and she said “yes.” They were married Sept. 1, 1956.

They seemed, from the looks of them, to be a bit of a mismatch: my father at 6-8 towering over his 5-foot-2 bride; this beautiful woman on the arm of the professor with the dark-rimmed glasses. When she couldn’t get up off the couch or needed help steading herself as she walked, he was always there with a hand to help her. His lasting impression of Richard Nixon, whom he met before Nixon became president, wasn’t anything political; it was that Nixon had once helped steady my mom when she stumbled as the three of them were walking together. That cemented Nixon in my Dad’s mind as a good guy. Sure, there was Watergate later on, but he had shown compassion toward my mom, and that’s what Dad remembered most.

During all the time my parents were married, I never heard Dad yell at Mom. Oh, he’d raise his voice and had quite a temper, but he never took it out on her. He never remarried and, although he flirted with women from time to time and even had a couple of girlfriends, there was never any doubt that Mom was, and always would be, the love of his life.

My parents tried for years to have a child, without success. Doctors told them they could find nothing wrong, but after six years, they had pretty much resigned themselves to a childless marriage. Then, in 1962, Dad was recruited to run for state Assembly. He’d been teaching at Fresno State for a few years by then, and as a former debating champion at Pomona College, he’d caught the attention of the California Republican Party.

It was an uphill battle, as he was running in a heavily Democratic district, and he was out on the campaign trail when he got the word from Mom that she was expecting. He lost the race by a handful of votes and never ran for office again; but he became a father in the process. He considered it a good tradeoff.

Teacher

I often asked Dad why he hadn’t run for office again, and he told me he preferred to teach.

He loved it so much that he continued to do so at Fresno State as long as he could, after the “traditional” retirement age, teaching into his 70s. In 2004, at the age of 73, he even taught a class for free. That’s right. And they almost didn’t let him.

Of all my father’s many professional accomplishments, it was this the singular act that, to me, said the most about his character.

A budget crisis in California had forced Fresno State to cancel several sections of a political science course. All the remaining classes were full, leaving some students without a class they’d need to graduate. So Dad, who had just retired, offered to teach a section for free.

The university rejected his offer, leading Dad to ask, “Why the heck can’t someone volunteer?” Officials contended it would actually cost the university money, based on a complex funding formula, but Dad wasn’t buying it: “It is difficult to figure out how that works,” he said. “I have a serious problem with that kind of logic.”

A story about the university’s rejection of his offer appeared on the front page of The Fresno Bee. Then, three days later, the university reversed itself and allowed him to teach a class, after all.

Not only did Dad teach the class, he taught everyone in the community at large something about the importance of character – and of putting students before the almighty dollar.  

Father

Dad also taught me a few personal lessons that I’ll never forget. Perhaps foremost among them was the value of an education. When I was struggling as a freshman in high school, failing more than one class, he told me once as he was driving our gold Buick LeSabre that I had two choices: I could start taking school seriously, or I could wind up in a minimum-wage job or doing field labor for the rest of my life. I listened, and the next year, I was earning all A’s and B’s.

He also taught me that victories are infinitely sweeter when they are earned. For a while, when we started to play ping pong, I never beat him. Ever. He wouldn’t let me win just to make me “feel good” because I was a 12-year-old kid; he wanted me to enjoy that feeling of accomplishment he knew I’d get when I finally did beat him.

He knew what he was doing, and he was right.

He was honest in action and word alike. When I wrote a novel I was sure he’d enjoy, he told me it hadn’t really grabbed him. He wasn’t harshly critical, but he didn’t offer false praise to spare my feelings. On the other hand, when I wrote a book on discrimination, he said it should be in every classroom in the country. So when he told my wife, Samaire, that her Mad World novels were some of the most exciting stories he’d read, I knew he was telling the truth. Although the two of them only knew each other for five years, they developed a close bond and heartfelt friendship; Samaire dedicated the third book in her trilogy to him.

Although he spent most of his career in the classroom, Dad did take a couple of detours from his job as a tenured professor at Fresno State. In 1966, he took me and Mom back to Australia, where he spent a year teaching as a visiting professor specializing in American government. His 3-year-old son played with plastic trains, drew crayon pictures and befriended imaginary dragons in an apartment overlooking Botany Bay in Sydney.

Politician

Dad was twice a finalist to become president of a Cal State university – once in Chico and once in Bakersfield – and he served for six years as dean of new program development for the entire university system. He wrote a textbook on California politics that went through 17 editions and served as a political analyst on virtually every Fresno TV station during election season over a period of more than two decades.

He served as chairman of the California Republican Assembly president of the statewide Academic Senate. He liked to talk about how he had invited then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to speak to the latter body, amid criticism that faculty members weren’t interested in hearing from a conservative politician. Dad introduced Reagan to tepid applause but said that, by the end of the session, he had won over the room to such an extent that he received a standing ovation.

He also recalled a visit to Reagan's office in Sacramento, where the governor invited him to try some jelly beans.

Dad was an interesting character, politically speaking. A lifelong Republican, he was nonetheless once branded the “pink professor” for a wholly imagined sympathy for communism. Yet despite his conservatism, he did hold a number of views that could only be described as progressive, and he valued a willingness to compromise well above any rigid allegiance to partisan dogma. In his later years, he often lamented the gridlock that evolved from a growing refusal to see the other side of things. He’d been trained as a debater to argue either side of a given issue, so it was natural that this refusal to listen to other points of view didn’t sit well with him. It’s yet another value he passed along to me.

Adventurer

But Dad’s life was so much more than politics.

He hitchhiked the Australian Outback during his first stay there (enduring an encounter with leeches in the process). He visited Egypt, Italy, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona, Utah … and I’m sure I’m leaving something out. We flew in a helicopter together on Maui, where we also drive the infamously curvy Road to Hana. We visited Stonehenge, Edinburgh Castle, York Cathedral, Monument Valley, Waimea Canyon, the Oregon coast and Haleakala crater together.

Along the way, he introduced me to his love of photography, shooting seemingly endless rolls of slides with his trusty Minolta. He taught me how to “frame” a photo and explore different angles to find just the right composition. We once arose before the crack of dawn to drive around the San Joaquin Valley, taking black-and-white photos of old barns and dilapidated buildings as the first rays of sunlight crept over the horizon, creating shadowy ghosts that appeared to linger among the beams and rafters.

Supporter

Dad was also a fan of science fiction from way back, from the literary world of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke to the on-screen entertainment of Star Trek and Star Wars. We watched all the movies in both series together up until the late ’90s, but there was never any doubt which franchise we both preferred. In the ST vs. SW debate, he came down squarely on the side of Trek. He introduced me to The Original Series in the early 1970s, and I’ve seen every episode of every incarnation – big and small screen – since.

He enjoyed folk music (Glenn Yarbrough, who died just a few days after he did at the age of 86; Simon and Garfunkel; Peter, Paul and Mary) and endured my   preference for bands like KISS, Aerosmith and Queen with good grace. He might not have agreed with my tastes, but he respected them: He was the kind of person who picked out Christmas and birthday gifts he thought you’d like, rather than just buying something he would have liked to get himself. He knew I liked dragons, so he picked out a dragon-themed wallet for me; he knew I liked “Star Trek,” so he bought me a “Star Trek”-themed mug. Little things like that from a very big heart.

There were big things, too. He bought a car for me to drive after I got my license. When I was a teenager, we visited Kauai every other year for about a decade. After Mom died, he took me on trips to Maui and England.

He also put me through college at Fresno State, where I graduated summa cum laude (all A’s except for one B and a single C). I was proud of my academic achievement, and I once suggested that I take one of my dad’s classes to see how well I would do. He had a reputation as a good but very challenging teacher, and I wanted to test myself, but Dad pointed out it would be a no-win situation: If I didn’t do well, it would be a discouraging setback, and if I aced the class, people might think he’d showed me some sort of favoritism.

There were all those things he did for me, and then there was just who he was. I would not be who I am today without my father’s love of language, history, science fiction, sports, logic … the list goes on and on.

For years, Dad and his colleagues would gather every week at 4 p.m. at a Fresno watering hole to “solve all the world’s problems” in the space of a couple of hours. Club, as he called it (not “the club,” just “Club”) was primarily a gathering of political science professors: my father’s best friend, Karl Swenson; Freeman Wright, Maurice Van Gerpen and Lyman Heine were among the regulars. They met at Fresno Feed and Fuel for a while, then switched to Sutter Street Bar & Grill at the Ramada for many years, where I was initiated as a sort of adjunct member of the group (not being a professor) for several of those years. Dad would almost always order a martini and an O’Doul’s.

Giver

Dad worked as a professor into his 70s and taught many future leaders, including onetime Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines, Fresno City Councilman Craig Scharton and Fresno Bee Executive Editor Jim Boren,

His health declined in later years, but his mind remained active even after he sold his home and moved into a long-term care facility. As long as you kept your sense of humor, he’d often say, you'd have a life worth living. His favorite comedians included Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Tim Conway and Carol Burnett. He was himself an inveterate punster, which I’m happy to say has rubbed off on me (although others may not be quite so happy about that!).

A couple of years ago, Dad helped me by providing information and firsthand recollections for my book Fresno Growing Up. His insights, as always, were invaluable. One of the last times he made the trek out of his care facility was a year ago, when he attended my launch party and signing for the book in downtown Fresno. In his final months, he told me repeatedly how proud he was of me and how much he was looking forward to reading my next two books, both due out next year. One is a history of Highway 99 in California, to which he introduced me; the other is a novel called Memortality about a woman who can bring back the dead through the power of her memory.

I wish I could do that with Dad now. In a sense, I’m doing the best I can with this remembrance, which can never come close to doing justice to perhaps the most accomplished man I’ve ever known, not to mention my greatest supporter and lifelong friend.

My father passed away Aug. 6, 2016. We’d seen him a few weeks earlier and held a three-hour conversation with him about politics and life, the past and the future. As always, he was gracious, telling us we should get going as the day stretched into late afternoon because we had a long drive ahead of us and shouldn’t be traveling too much after nightfall. “Watch out for all those nuts on the road,” he’d say. Every time.

I talked to my dad on the phone two days before he lost consciousness. He didn’t seem to be feeling too well, so just before I hung up, I told him something I said too infrequently.

“I love you, Dad.”

He told me he loved me, too. Those were the last and best words we ever exchanged.

Note: The photo that appears above shows my father and my mom, Lollie Provost, in the early 1970s.