The hottest news blurb of March is that 22-year-old actress Lindsay Lohan is converting to Judaism.
My tribe is very proud, but that’s not the point. We know about Judaism’s gain and Catholicism’s loss from a sort-of-announcement on Lindsay’s Facebook page.
I don’t know. Is she really going to do it? Is it, goodbye New Testament for Lindsay, based on nothing more than a few lines on Facebook? Even the AIG auditors would want more confirmation than that.
Peggy Orenstein, author of the memoir, “Waiting for Daisy,” had a cute, mock-worried essay about Facebook in the New York Times Sunday magazine a few weeks ago, fretting that “online social networks are so new that it’s impossible to know their long-term impact.”
Peggy, I don’t think the impact is going to be good. It’s too easy to edit the truth; it’s too easy to benefit from the credibility that comes with “writing it down” — even if it shows up on a computer screen or cell phone.
There are no editors or auditors or bank examiners involved in this free-association stuff from the brains of hormonal teenagers and the like. Now, out-of-work professionals are cranking out the Facebook fiction, trying to snare that next cool job.
By the way, be sure to check my Facebook stuff for information about my brother’s new world tour concert series.
The Guardian newspaper in England called him “the greatest songwriter of his generation — a good match for his brother Larry, the greatest columnist of his generation.”
Yes, we knew from an early age that Leonard Cohen would be to folk music and rock and folksy rock what Larry would be to opinion journalism
At about the time that Leonard was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I was named usually the best columnist on this page of the Hartford Business Journal.
When Leonard sang, in 1992, “I’ve seen the future, brother: it is murder,” he was communicating with me, his brother. You can see the resemblance on my Facebook page.
Speaking of Facebook, I wonder what the Facebook entry was like for that guy “Clark Rockefeller,” whose real name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter and who, apparently, is not actually a wealthy, cool relative of the Rockefeller clan; and who apparently is involved in all sorts of naughty stuff and crimes.
You would have thought someone would have tapped into his Facebook page and seen pretty quickly that it was written in German and other suspicious stuff.
That’s not to say you can’t modify your life a bit online, through stuff like Wikipedia, which is easier to edit to your benefit than the footnotes in the annual report. Facebook is better; it comes from the heart and you just know it’s true.
Speaking of truth, my brother Leonard spent five years in seclusion at a Zen center near Los Angeles. He’s ordained as some sort of Buddhist monk, which means he won’t be filing any Facebook entry like Lindsay Lohan about converting to Judaism. He’s been there.
Well, time for me to go. As I mention on Facebook, the Hartford Business Journal really depends on me for good stuff, on time. Do I look worried? Check out my Facebook face.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
