everybody's special

Quote from The New York Times of January 6, 2011:

" 'The dirty little secret is that the largest special interests are us -- the vast majority of U.S. taxpayers,' the report said. 'Virtually all of us benefit from certain exclusions from income, deductions from income or tax credits.' " [I wonder if the actual report had the serial comma before "or tax credits." You can check here if you have the time. Not surprisingly, it is not a concise report.]

The report referred to above is from the National Tax Advocate's office. Nina E. Olson is the I.R.S.'s national taxpayer advocate.

I did not even know Nina was our I.R.S. ombudsman, or ombudswoman. Did you?

Hi, Nina.

You saying we're all special?

Awww.

Your point is well taken, Ms. Olson. I've said it before: everyone is all for reform until it affects him or her personally; then it is somebody else's problem, somebody else's profligate ways.

The Saga of the Especially Special Specialist

I once had a job (sounds like a mundane start to "Norwegian Wood") whose title was Project Specialist. They made up the title because they needed to call me something, and they didn't exactly have anyone who was just a technical writer. That wouldn't sound, um, technical enough. How special I felt that first day, back in February 1999. After all, I was now a specialist, and not just any kind of specialist but a project specialist. Being a specialist distinguished me from the hoi polloi of all those plebeian generalists out there, or within the firm.

Turns out, the House of Specialists is bursting at the seams with residents. In fact, we all have a room there. I'm just down the hall from you, and you. Especially special you.

This weekend, I just finished a book I had blogged about even before I read it: Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.

I can report it is entertaining and informative. It may even change the way I think (which may or may not make me happy, but that is only part of the story). At one point Gilbert writes:

Because if you are like most people, then like most people, you don't know you're like most people. Science has given us a lot of facts about the average person, and one of the most reliable of these facts is that the average person doesn't see herself as average. Most students see themselves as more intelligent than the average student, most business managers see themselves as more competent than the average business manager, and most football players see themselves as having better 'football sense' than their teammates. Ninety percent of motorists consider themselves to be safer-than-average drivers, and 94 percent of college professors consider themselves to be better-than-average teachers. [p.252]

He goes on.

I suppose he could just as easily have written, "Every blogger considers himself or herself especially special, with insights more worth sharing than anyone else and insights more worthy of comments than anyone else."

Or else, why do we all bother tapping the keyboard keys, hunh?

I'm not sure this stumbling onto specialness diluted by everyone else's special specialness makes me happy or not.

I think not.

Maybe it's a topic for me and my therapist on Wednesday.

Then again, I'm a little fearful my therapist may pull a Dr. Melfi on me, just as she did on Tony Soprano. My therapist might feel that I'm using therapy simply to validate my pathological special specialness that goes by the especially special name of solipsism.