COLUMNIST: Deconstruction: let the teardown begin

Have you ever met someone who claimed to be a “deconstructionist?” To tell you the truth, I don’t really know what the textbook definition of “deconstructionist” actually is. If I were to venture a guess, I would say a “deconstructionist” is someone who deconstructs.

Yes, I have a university degree. Be impressed.

I first started thinking about deconstructionists when one of my comic idols, Craig Ferguson, mentioned it during a monologue on “The Late Late Show.” He was going on about “cheeky monkeys” and foul mouth fluffy bunny rabbits when he mentioned his desire to continue the deconstruction late night television.

I have always considered by current position to be the late night equivalent of the newspaper world. Perhaps that is just my way of addressing a position many people look at with surprise.

“Oh, really?” Is a common response I get when telling people what I do for living at the present time. “What’s that like?”

When people kept asking me that question, I started doing crazy things like making videos with puppets and writing about kids who procrastinate on term papers just so I’ll have something interesting to say when people toss that Q in my D.

(That’s code for “question” and “direction” for all y’all’s that be square. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.)

Deconstructionism is interesting when you think about it, probably because most of us have been taught that taking something apart is a negative rather than a positive. Creation is remarkable because we make something that wasn’t there before. We feel as though we contribute.

Deconstruction means we take something apart, we remove something that was there before, “destroying” it in a sense; however, the word “destroy” might be a little strong, don’t you think?

Not everything that is created is great. Michigan fans have yet to prove they can contribute to society in any meaningful way, for example. I’m not sure who created them, but I’m pretty certain it was a mistake.

(As Craig Ferguson says, “I look forward to your letters.”)

Look back at history and see what good deconstruction has done. I bet the people in East Germany were pretty happy to see the Berlin Wall get deconstructed. Segregation wasn’t exactly a happy barrier, either and the continued pull down of that wall is for the better. Keep shattering that glass ceiling, ladies, because that’s a deconstruction project worth going after.

Then again, none of those examples really apply to my current line of work. There isn’t an evil force keeping me from writing stories or doing other pieces of journalistic work. It’s not like I’m a producer of the movie “Road to 9/11” and that which I helped legally create is being suppressed by a leadership who wants to re-write history.

(That’s right, I said it. Put that in your Fairness Doctrine and smoke it.)

Maybe deconstructionism hasn’t gotten a fair shake. Maybe it isn’t so much about destroying something as much as it is looking at things from a different perspective. Think of it as taking a Shakespeare play out of the Victorian era and having set in modern day Harlem or on the moon.

It’s the same play, just a different way to look at it.

Deconstructionizing (Yeah, I just made up my own version of the verb. Feel free to use it as you please. I expect royalties if published) seems like a fun way to pursue things. Granted, we can’t literally deconstruct everything, but it might serve as a great reminder that there is more than one way to look at a situation, more than one way to skin a cat, more than one way to paddle a boat, steer a canoe, maneuver a battleship… I’m not sure why I am going with the nautical themes, but hey. Why not?

I’m just looking at things a little differently.