A useful thing to ask yourself as you revise: "am I Theo Baker-ing here?"
I feel kinda bad roasting an eighteen-year-old; at the same time, his Twitter kerfuffle with Hakeem Jefferson offers an object lesson in the relationship between emotional immaturity and bad writing.
If you are a person with sanity and standards who no longer checks “Twitter” at all, please allow me to summarize the latest stupid little media snit happening on there. Bear with me; it’s relevant to your interests as book people.
On Saturday, Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford, tweeted the following criticism at Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times:
This tweet displeased Peter Baker’s son, an 18(?)-year-old Stanford undergraduate named Theo Baker. Theo then sent Jefferson an email to express his displeasure.
From there, shit hit the fan.
Before we get to what Theo said, you should know a little more about him.
A student journalist at the Stanford Daily, Theo Baker made a name for himself last year after publishing a scoop that led to the resignation of Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Theo won many well-deserved awards and accolades for this, including a Polk, and promptly became the most insufferable teenage Twitter user in the history of the platform, at least for me.
As a mom, lifelong Washingtonian, and graduate of the same-ish tony high school as Theo—he went to St. Albans and I to National Cathedral, albeit about 20 years apart—I’ve spent months transfixed by this kid’s behavior. Seriously: I’ve ogled it harder than a mouthbreathing creep at a car wreck. I can’t look away: the polish! The privilege! The pretension! The preternatural intellect and prekindergartener EQ! That godawful piece he wrote for The Atlantic! The way he comports himself with all the Dunning-Kruger tut-tutting noblesse oblige of a late-life Tom Friedman in his actual fucking teens, after a single big scoop! Retch! Barf!
My nausea is about me, not Theo. It’s pure projective identification. The whole thing makes me so grateful: that my own DC-media parents were never as famous as his; that my college newspaper career was less illustrious than his; that social media was only just firing up when I was his age; that I have his example to use as a cautionary tale for my own three elementary-age children.
I made all KINDS of thoughtless pretention-based mistakes when I was Theo’s age, but my haters would really have to go digging to find them now. But I digress.
Theo’s, however, will likely cause him agita in years to come. He’s since deleted his tweets in response to Jefferson’s, and I think Jefferson’s deleted the screen shots he posted of Theo’s emails, but alas, nothing can really be deleted from the internet, can it.
Here’s one of the emails Theo sent to Jefferson:
WHERE TO EVEN BEGIN?
The lack of salutation. The lack of complimentary close. The condescension. The finger-wagging about what objectivity means to a faculty member and expert in the same—a faculty member who is also a Black man. The subject line. (“Really?”)
Oh, oh my God: I want to cringe all the way out of my body and all the way to the fucking moon. Bye bye, skin! Bye bye, musculature! I’m too awkward to need you anymore. B;lks’;lfgodkijwoe4pu9it5rjwolisfjfgllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.
I doubt many of you need to be told what’s wrong with Theo’s email.
Most of you are simply too old not to understand its many problems. Anyone who’s been alive for more than five unsheltered minutes in the internet era does not have to be told how hard this kind of rhetorical posture backfires on the level of persuasion, let alone personal reputation. To say nothing of the rudeness. (Was Theo never enrolled in one of those DC private school etiquette courses? I thought we all had to do those.)
Oh, and—to lecture people in a high-handed “objective” way about objectivity when we all know this is about coming to the defense of YOUR DAD! AGH!
(Maybe it’s just because my client Caitlin Gibson’s excellent piece about kids who remember past lives is stuck in my head, but I really feel like this kid might simply be the reincarnation of some smug neoliberal Boomer who died in like 2006? But I digress.)
Now it’s time for me to leave poor Theo Baker alone and tell you how all of this applies to you, a person who is not Theo Baker.
If you are Theo: look, you’re clearly an intelligent guy. You fucked up and are going to be fine. I wish you a long life of rich experience, true friends, real love, self-forgiveness, and no book deals any time soon.
Seriously: anyone who tells you it’s a good idea for you to write a book within the next five to ten years, let alone before you graduate college, is not your friend.
I am saying this because I highly suspect people are already telling you it’s time to write a book. Give a gift to yourself on your deathbed and tell them no—no, it isn’t time for you to write a book yet.
Or feel free to ignore me on that one. Whatever! What do I know!