My Dog Ate My Boyfriend

I think we have a love affair with advice; in fact I’m sure of it. Not taking it particularly but certainly reading it. The New York Times, that venerable old slut, has recognized this passion and has not one, but three advice columns in their Sunday edition. One, The Ethicist (a long-running feature found in the Magazine and written by at least three “advisors” over the last five years), doesn’t tell you how to hold your fork during petit dejeuner but focuses on, well, ethics and ramifications thereof. The advice pretty much follows the guidelines you would expect, which is always to do the “right” thing, hurting as few feelings as possible while still staying on the right side of the law.

I almost never read anything in The SundayStyles section (there’s really not much in there directed towards any of my personal interests) but I don’t recycle it unopened because I always have to read an advice column called Social Q’s which, unlike in the Mag, delves more into the proprieties of dining and dating and it answers letters from people totally flummoxed about what to do about yapping dogs or nosy neighbors and how to deal with, well, social issues. Again, the advice is predictive but leans toward the more mundane like oh, that’s awful, you should see your clergyman/doctor/lawyer or consult the CDC, the IRS or the president of the PTA.

Within the confines of The Magazine itself there is a fairly new feature, usually on about page 10 or 11, called The 1 Page Magazine which has a one-question-one-answer advice column in the upper right-hand corner called Ask Judge John Hodgman. I didn’t notice it for a while because I only scan this page since it’s such a jumble of tiny-print nonsense and Judge Hodgman pretty much disappears into the mess that makes up the tiny items that constitute its make-up. I am reminded of the old days of Mad Magazine with little illustrative stuff running around the margins and between the equally tiny articles, comments and general trivia. Might I add that my trifocals work overtime gleaning the glister (if any) from this chaff.

The authors of all three of these columns, besides giving advice, attempt to entertain with pithy and, perhaps to them, humorous asides. I call this a shriek in the wilderness for someone to help them out of the literary abyss to which they have been allotted in the world of journalistic publishing.

As far back as I can remember there was always Dear Abby and her sister Ann Landers plying their very lucrative (I think) trade. And, of course, the ramifications of this preoccupation with advice, dare I call it a fetish? appeared on television long ago with Dr. Ruth and others of her ilk which then spawned Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz and, I’m sure, others I haven’t stumbled upon in my channel surfing.

Whatever is going on I’m just as much a victim of it as anybody else. Sometimes I’m even spurred to make up questions and send them to the various columnists just to see if any of my questions are taken seriously. Yes, I’ve been successfully published several times but, hey, the advice I sought could apply to the general public, if not really to my own problems/situations.

Maybe this would be a good question for The Ethicist! That is, is it ethical to send in bogus advice questions? My best one that got printed, so far, wasn’t answered and the columnist copped out and asked her (or his) readers for their opinions: “I love my new boyfriend and I think he loves me but he doesn’t get along with my dog and my dog hates my boyfriend. How do I choose?” I now realized that’s a totally unanswerable question. If I was the advisor I would probably say, “Wait for one of them to die,” but I’m sure I would lose my job immediately which, by the way, might be the right answer.