Remember Privacy?

Remember privacy? I do. I was raised in the '60s and '70s when it was taken to the limit. I had no idea how much money my parents earned or what my friends did after school unless I was with them or called them on the phone.

People went into the hospital and returned without disclosing the exact nature of their illnesses. Our elected leaders, movie stars and sports heroes sometimes engaged in nefarious activities but rarely were they headlined in the daily newspapers. Perhaps privacy was merely a natural byproduct of having fewer channels for sharing personal information. But I also recall that people simply didn't disclose much of a personal nature to strangers or acquaintances or -- sometimes -- even to family members.

So can you blame me all these years later for wishing that Jon and Kate would simply shut up? Is it really necessary for them to share their family feud with the world? And aren't they aware that their children are old enough to listen to the radio, to read magazines, to hear snippets of Entertainment Tonight on a friend's TV?

How are any of us enriched by following the ups and downs of that dysfunctional family? Similarly, why do celebrities (or marginal celebrities) from MacKenzie Phillips to Kathy Griffin choose to assail us with the most intimate details of their private lives? Yes, yes, I know. They do it for profit or to comfort others who have suffered from "consensual incest" in Phillips' case. But aren't there other ways to provide succor to others without spilling all on Oprah? It's one thing to voluntarily relinquish all pretense to one's one privacy, but totally different to spill the most intimate details of the lives of others, particularly if they aren't around to defend themselves.

For those who behave badly in private -- like David Letterman -- the ultimate punishment is being outed in public. How appropriate that his blackmailer was a TV producer. Who better to understand the value of telling a story that the main character doesn't want told? But what lesson did we all learn from that debacle and isn't one we already know? In two years will it have made any difference to anyone but the one in prison that Letterman was a dirty old man?

The tools to destroy privacy exist. You can Twitter at will -- letting the entire world know that you're constipated or having wild sex or eating a Lean Cuisine. Facebook statuses allow us to share the most mundane, boring aspects of our lives on a minute by minute basis. We can post not only photos of our own lives but also those of people who happen to be framed by a camera at any given moment. We can text as fast as our fingers can fly across our cell phone keyboards. We can Skype and use our computer webcams until one of us falls asleep.

The good news is that it is possible to be connected to our friends and family and virtual strangers in a way we couldn't have imagined forty years ago. The world is a much smaller, more accessible place. That's not a bad thing. Technology is inherently not bad, but the ways we choose to use it can be detrimental. Words can be noise until they are put together in a way that makes sense and are directed at specific audiences. And there is a difference between taking a point of view on an issue and revealing your favorite sexual positions. In that case, audience matters.

Privacy is about determining what to share about your life with others. Sometimes -- as is the case with Letterman -- that decision is taken away from you. But too often we assume that because the tools exist to broadcast every aspect of our lives, we must use them. Not so. There is a nice balance between telling everyone everything and discretion. I advocate a step backwards on this one. Not a return to the 70s but perhaps a little more thought given to the impact of giving your life away moment by moment.

Comments

[CherokeeAmerican]

If you decide to go to a "prolife" pregnancy center for help, BEWARE of your counselor sharing your pregnancy history and other personal information with outsiders.

Instead of keeping information between you and your counselor where it belongs, a large number of pregnancy centers associated with CareNet.org, HeartBeatI­nternation­al.org, and OptionLine.org allow the information you trust them with to leave the center and get into the hands of the employees of internet service providers and other people.

Yes, they enter your data on the internet exposing it to the prying eyes of hackers and giving the employees of their local internet company free access to it without your consent.

If you're not sure whether or not your local pregnancy center does this, ask them if they use ekyros.com or waycoolsw.com to enter your information into the computer. If they do, your counselor is sending the information you give them across the internet and giving the employees of ekyros.com and waycoolsw.com access to view it.

Hundreds of OptionLine.org local pregnancy centers use internet based client intake software products from ekyros.com and waycoolsw.com for “convenience”.


These centers make you think that your pregnancy history and other confidential information will never leave the counseling room, then turn around and enter it online and put it into the hands of people you don't know, outside the center, without your permission.

[hannahabrams1212]

Although i really like this article, im obliged to point out how this makes you a little bit of a hypocrit. I ask for you to always shut my door, to not ask about every little detail of my life, and that when i do share with you those things, that you keep them between you and me. Yet, you seem to have trouble everyday with those simple tasks. Now, dont get me wrong, i love you to death, but I'm just telling you my opinion.

Hannah

[Tamar Abrams - Huffpost Blogger]

Point well taken, daughter of mine. And I fully expect you to write a tell-all book someday when I'm too old and infirm to protest. Ahhhh, the cycle of life.... Love you.

[spinmas]

Yes I remember privacy, if I was Chris Rock I would say the lack of it today, falls heavily in the laps of white folks, you guys are so ok, with incremntalism. It starts with when like you I was in the 60's and white folks were allowing there kids to drive at younger and younger ages, white children drive the incrementalism and then 30-40 years later or sooner the white boomer parents realize that they went to far and allowed too much to their kids, then they need to raise the driving age etc etc yadda yadda yadda, it happens with ATM machines and fee's, white folks are, oh how great and neat and then bam!! the banks eat us up with ever increasing and changing fee's. White skin privelage and prerogatives equals lack of privacy, becuse in the Chris rock white folks voice" we don't have anything to hide"...you allow stuff when you know historically that people with white skin are notoriously unscrupulous. They have been since the Spanish inqusition. Your kids get slapped on the wrist when they hack and send virus' out that corrupt and invade business and individual personal information on computer hard drives.And we can put the Gennie/ white skin privelageback int he bottle, or can we, maybe after the next big astoroid, the slat will be wiped clean again.

[SonofLiberty1]

Ms Abrams...

THANK GOD SOMEONE FINALLY SAID SOMETHING SANE ABOUT THIS:)

Now I think facebook is a great tool for finding old high school and college friends but I don't use it to note mundane activities.

Twitter...very bad customer service.

I guess you can tell that I'm a child of the sixties, graduating high school in 1975 yes and not knowing everything there was to know about a friend unless you were there with them.

We all need a little privacy.

Some things are just too complicated and too private to talk about.

Again, thanks for standing up and shouting some sanity.

Maybe we have a chance:)

[smacc1]

Good article.

[theaterdoc]

I agree with the overriding idea here: mystique surrounding film and t.v. stars is gone. We see the mundane details that eclipse the glamourous image, and that gets old.
As far as Jon and Kate, it's useful (but cringe-inducing) to consider HOW they became celebrities. Parading their offspring before cameras to make viewers privy to their lives MAY have been marginally cute and innocuous when they were infants and toddlers, but their divorce has devolved into a grotesque carnival. Does it matter the dueling motives for keeping them on versus taking them off the air? It seems glaringly clear that removing the kids from the show gives them a fighting chance to cope with the trauma and chaos of their parents' divorce. Kate's insistence that their livelihood is in peril because tantrums and birthday parties won't be broadcast is not the stance of a protective parent.

[MerhabaAbi]

I don't text, have a facebook account or tweet. If you want to get ahold of me, you've got to use your voice and we'll have a conversation where one of us is talking and the other is listening. If you've got to text in the middle of our conversation, chances are you just did it at the end of our conversation.

[Don Parker - Huffpost Blogger]

I thought about telling you how much I appreciate what you've said here and how much I agree with you on so many points about privacy and discretion, but ... I decided to keep my thoughts to myself. And besides, I'm too busy tweeting about what I had for lunch and telling my Facebook "friends" that I'm bored in this very moment. And everyone needs to know that, don't you think?