DR. FILL-IN-THE-BLANK

I have a syndicated advice column of my own that is widely read in many daily papers across the country. Sometimes, I’ve substituted actual reader’s questions with ones I made up myself. Just because I had a good answer to the question in my head.
Is that wrong? I mean, it’s all fluff, right?

—A. L.

Dr. Sigmund Fraud says: Fluff? Maybe so. But for a large number of Americans, your column, Dilbert and the lottery numbers is probably the closest they will ever come to reading for the rest of their lives.

There is an implicit trust between reader and columnist that is somehow cheapened when you simply make up your own questions and then spit out answers to them. People come to you with real problems that tear at them night and day. But to you, their problems might as well be total fiction. Sounds to me like you’ve lost touch with your readers. Keep it up and you’ll lose touch with yourself.

On the other hand, I know what you mean. These freaking people. “Oh, my teenage daughter is thinking about having sex.” What a unique predicament. “My mother-in-law never taught my husband how to make a bed.” These are problems? Famine. Global warming. The world economy. These are problems.

No, we have to deal with “I saw my ex the other day, and I still feel like I need closure.” Give me a break.

We ought to go out for drinks sometime.

Ruthless says: We already knew you were a fraud. In fact, everybody already knows that. You’re fooling nobody, so that makes it all right.

Only one question remains: Whatever gave you the idea the answers in your head were “good”?

M. Baudelaire says: Perhaps, Madame Acronym, you are familiar with my work Les fleurs du mal, and more specifically with this line: “Hypocrite lecteur,—mon sembable,—mon frère!”

Seriously, though: I’ve been accused of being a philospohical fraud by no less than Jean-Paul Sartre. (“Pot, meet kettle”—am I right?) But I would argue that your job and mine are similar, in that they are both bound to reality and free of it.

Here’s what I mean: It is our duty to reflect the world as we see it, to reimagine it in a way that informs rather than contradicts or displaces that vision, and to resolve that vision’s contradictions and pain in a way that makes life more bearable for our readers. That is to say, we must be free to invent situations that aid us in our mission to make the world sensible, if that is possible, so long as we are faithful to that world. We must be permitted to gather what we observe and reassemble it, using whatever power of intellect we can bring to bear.

I turn my invented situations into poetry. You turn yours into pat aphorisms. Both are equal comfort against the horror of the sublime. Here’s to you, kid. Keep lying to yourself and anyone who will listen.

The Advice God says: You, sir, are a fraud. Just because you think up some self-amusing trite witticism doesn’t mean it bears repeating to the world. Giving advice is a serious job and should be based in science, psychology, evolutionary psychology and ethics.

As it turns out, I, too, have a nationally syndicated advice column, and a fluffy dog whom I dress up with little clothes and bows to match my outrageous outfits. And that, I assure you, is the only thing fluffy about my line of work.

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