A Morally Dubious Assignment

There are so many strange things about this new assignment, I don't know where to begin.

The writing itself is easy enough. It's a little rhetorical exercise that I'm sure dates back to Roman times. I'm supposed to take the words of several prominent politicians, and rearrange them so that they express essentially the opposite of the politicians' actual views. The resulting speech can then be read as a verbatim quote, and yet totally misrepresent the person being quoted.

This cute game provides the answer to the riddle, "How do you tell a lie using nothing but facts?" Sure, it's a morally dubious activity, but as a nameless freelancer lurking behind an unmarked door, I'm not one who shrinks from moral ambiguity. At best, I write words on behalf of other people who then pretend the words are their own. It's a flim-flam, a deception, an illusion -- but entertainment is all about illusions. In that old movie, do you remember the thunder crash in the background as they approached the vampire's castle? I happen to know it wasn't real thunder. It was a tape recording, overdubbed later. The world is filled with similar illusions -- get used to it! -- and ghostwriting is just another one of them.

Anyhow, this assignment. Rearranging people's actual words to create meanings that they didn't mean. Not difficult at all to do; it's child's play. In fact, in this case it is a child's play. And that gets around to my point. Sure, I know that parents help their children with their homework. That's not cheating, is it? If someone helps you on a test, it's cheating. With homework, it's fair game to get help -- from your friends, your teacher, your parents, even a professional tutor. But when the parent goes out to hire a ghostwriter to complete a homework assignment, isn’t that a bit extreme? (Not that I have anything against ghostwriting other people's homework assignments. After razzing my boss for turning down a similar job, I would be a hypocrite to suddenly develop a moral objection to that line of work. Especially considering how much this man was willing to pay. But -- help me out, here. Something is off about this. There’s not even any pretense of involving the student in some kind of learning process. And isn’t it slightly unfair to the other students whose fathers can’t afford to hire professional writers to complete their second-grade...)

Yes, that’s the other thing about this. This boy is in the second grade, and his class is doing some kind of political performance art? Now, I’m not a parent or an educator, so you can tell me to go buzz off and say this is none of my business, but is that really age-appropriate? I mean, aside from the question of whether it’s appropriate to involve young school children in partisan political activity. I mean, this is nasty politics even when adults do it. It should be beneath us, all the mudslinging and name-calling and distorting. It’s immature, it’s juvenile, it’s so… second grade. Damn! Okay, so maybe it is age-appropriate for second graders. My argument has been demolished by my own devastating choice of metaphor. Fine. So second graders are now being involved in petty politics as part of their school curriculum. Who am I to argue? As I pointed out in my previous post, I don’t even really exist.

I’m just a ghostwriter. A substitute ghostwriter. Doing a job for a man who...

Yes, that’s the other thing. This man who came in a little while ago... It's not my job to pass judgments on people's lifestyle choices... but he was, I thought, more than a little too old to have a young school-age son. I mean, his wife would have to be twenty years younger than... not that I'm passing judgment. No, no, this is a judgment-free zone. Not my job to sort out my customers' lives.

Actually, I'd better get started. This is a super rush job. Apparently the boy's performance is tomorrow. Nothing like putting things off until the last minute, eh? They probably got this assignment three weeks ago. They probably put it off until tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, until today arrived, and putting it off until tomorrow now longer works. Then it becomes a crisis, and you have to pull out all the stops and deal with it. Have Daddy take a pile of cash to the nice man in the alley; he can make this problem go away.

But you can't expect young children to think about the future, to keep a calendar, to prioritize their work, to have a back up plan in case their first efforts fail. That takes a certain amount of, you know, responsibility and maturity, that you don't expect from eight-year-olds. When I was eight years old, I was lucky if I kept track of when my favorite shows were on TV. I missed them at least half of the time, distracted by things like chasing dogs, flying kites, climbing trees, flying cars, talking horses -- wait, I think actually some of those things were on TV.

Update, 8 p.m.: Slight misunderstanding. I thought my customer said, "My son is in the second grade." Apparently what he actually said was, "My son is the president's aide." Another detail I missed: this job was supposed to be confidential. It seems it's particularly important not to write about it on the Internet. Hey, how am I supposed to know these things if you don't tell me? I'm a ghostwriter, not a mind reader! Anyhow, do me a big favor and forget about this particular post.