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Channeling Freddie Mercury’s Work Ethic

I liked the 2018 Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but one thing about it bothered me: It left out the part of Freddie Mercury’s life that inspires me as much as the music itself — his descent into illness and how, the weaker he got, the harder he worked.

In interviews, the surviving members of Queen recount how Freddie, barely able to stand up, continued to slave away on new music and videos. Guitarist Brian May tells of how he worried Freddie wouldn’t be able to handle the vocals for “The Show Must Go On” off the “Innuendo” album. Freddie, he explained, said “fuck it,” downed a vodka and nailed it:

The last video he did for that album was for “These Are the Days of Our Lives,” and you can see how frail and in pain he was:

The last song he ever recorded was “Mother Love.” The band has noted that in that period, Freddie was close to the end. During the recording he had to stop because he couldn’t do anymore. He planned to finish it but never did. That’s why May sang the final verses.

There have been times in my life where things have felt too hard, when staying in bed seemed the better option. Depression and anxiety makes you feel like that a lot.

But then I’d think of Freddie toiling away, getting out of bed and working. And I would get up and go to work.

We all experience diversity. We all have our deeply ingrained pain — scars of the past and present.

Many of us have grown fresh scars while dealing with life in a pandemic with a gut-wrenching dose of street violence thrown in.

I have plenty of role models who inspire my “stay the course” attitude: Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and FDR come to mind.

But lately, with a global health crisis fueling the things that make life toughest right now, it’s Freddie who is cheering me forward.

Two images of Queen front man Freddie Mercury: one with his cat and one of him in a blue suit
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Cancer: Faces of Bravery, Faces of Fear

The photos tell the tale clearly. Beth Whaanga, mother of four, has been through hell. She has the scars to prove it. And when she decided to show the world, people on Facebook unfriended her.

Mood music:

Whaanga has been in a long and brutal battle against cancer. Multiple surgeries have left her body mangled, though when fully clothed, the scars are hidden. She chose to reveal those scars in a photo series called “Under the Red Dress.” According to The Huffington Post, she lost 103 Facebook friends over it.

“When Beth posted these images on Facebook, 103 of them UNFRIENDED her immediately,” columnist Rebecca Sparrow wrote. “Some felt the images were inappropriate or even pornographic.”

Some say the people who did so are jerks, uptight prudes who prefer that life’s unfair twists remain hidden from view.

I prefer to think that they just acted on fear. They see the danger to their own lives and those of their loved ones in the photos. The first thing most people do in the face of fear is turn and run away. We’ve all done that. I certainly have. The hope is that over time we learn to turn back and face the fear. In time, I think at least some of them will.

What Whaanga did was brave and beautiful. She shows us that despite the damage she suffered, life goes on. She continues to live and love.

I know too many people with cancer. Some are distant friends, some are in my immediate family. They’ve shown bravery in the face of cancer in their own ways, but I hope Whaanga’s photos offer them additional inspiration and hope.

red dress

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The Courage of Brian Krebs

Brian Krebs has been kind enough to compliment me on this blog a few times, telling me I have courage for writing about the demons. Today I celebrate Krebs’ courage, which is far more formidable than anything I could ever hope to possess.

Mood music:

For years at The Washington Post (which foolishly cut him loose) and more recently through Krebs on Security, the man has relentlessly investigated online crime and written scores of groundbreaking articles on his findings.

Hackers lurking deep in the bowels of the Internet’s seedy underbelly have good reason to hate Krebs’ guts. This is the guy who broke news of the recent Target breach, not to mention most of the other big security stories that went mainstream in recent memory.

And the bad guys aren’t happy. In the past they have:

  • Sent poop and heroin to Krebs’ doorstep
  • Stolen his identity half a dozen times
  • Targeted his website with withering denial-of-service attacks
  • Triggered a SWAT team raid on his home just as his mom was arriving for dinner

None of it has stopped Krebs.

As a journalist, I always envied the man. You could say I hated him as much as the black hats of the underground. Too many times to count, I had to follow up on news stories he broke for the sake of getting headlines on my employers’ sites. It always frustrated me that he could sniff out the tough stuff. It often made me feel inferior.

This was the typical newsroom conversation:

Editor: Did you see that Krebs post? We have to have something on that.

Me, in standard reporter denial mode: Fuck Krebs. He’s not writing about where the security industry is headed. All he writes about is the latest cybercrime.

Editor: Yeah, and he’s winning. Follow it up.

Me: Fuuuuuuuuck.

But in time, I came to appreciate and admire him. I even started to see him as a hero.

Though still a writer, I’m no longer a reporter chasing news, and that has allowed me to shed the last of the biases I may have held against Krebs.

Or, maybe more to the point, it allows me to admit something I probably wouldn’t have acknowledged in those earlier roles — I was jealous of the man’s tenacity and balls. Jealous with a capital J.

Krebs’ boldness has captured a lot of headlines lately, including this one in The New York Times, whose editors were probably delighted to remind The Washington Post of how stupid it was to fire him.

He has also received a lot of awards lately. Tuesday, for example, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group awarded him its M3AAWG Mary Litynski Award at the organization’s meeting Tuesday in San Francisco. In announcing it, the group said:

With an intense passion and impressive self-taught technical skill, investigative journalist Brian Krebs has persistently and courageously shed a rare light on the dark underbelly of the Internet that has resulted in the disruption or shutdown of innumerable cybercrime operations.

The award and comments are well earned.

Congrats, my friend. The world is a better place because you’re in it.

Brian KrebsKrebs at work. Photo by Daniel Rosenbaum/New York Times News Service

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Obsessing About Snowden Blinds Us From Bigger Truths

I’ve hestitated to write about Edward Snowden, the former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) who leaked details of top-secret mass surveillance programs to the press. People see him as either a hero or a traitor, but I’ve been conflicted.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/VRXpL8mdgpQ

I used to fear everything and wanted the government to do everything possible to keep me safe, even if it meant giving up some liberty. I eventually got past the fear and now believe we must live life to the fullest, even if it means we’re not always safe. That part of me distrusts government and considers Snowden a hero for exposing how much spying the NSA does on its own citizens.

I also write about information security for a living and have many friends in government. I’ve seen the risks they take to secure us from terrorists and online attackers and how they’ve resisted the urge to talk about what they see because they believe it would damage the greater good. Snowden used to work among them and, by doing what he did, betrayed them. That part of me thinks Snowden is a traitor. His flight from the authorities only solidified that feeling.

Yesterday I decided to take a position one way or the other. I invited friends on Facebook and Twitter to weigh in, and found that half of those who responded think he’s a hero and the other half think he’s a traitor.

But the comments made me realize that by focusing on Snowden and the NSA, we’re distracting ourselves from bigger truths.

The important thing is what this story says about many of us Americans:

  • How we get obsessed with hero worship without considering all the supposed hero’s motives. Those of use who mistrust government are quick to raise people like Snowden on a pedestal, viewing him as a brave soul who exposed government’s evil side. But when you flee and pass on government secrets to countries like Russia and China, countries far more challenged in the freedom department than the U.S., are you really heroic?
  • How we crave scapegoats because it’s easier to scowl at a scapegoat than consider how we allowed the government to spiral out of control. After 9/11, we were so scared that we willingly allowed the government to enact overreaching laws like the PATRIOT Act. We’ve been paying for it ever since.
  • How we miss the forest for the trees. The larger lesson is that we could change things if we were willing to do the work.

We need to stop the blame game and look at what we must do as Americans to change things for the better.

We must be willing to hold political leaders accountable and stop reelecting the very politicians who vote to authorize more and more government control.

We must own up to the fact that we allowed the government to head down this path. If we’re outraged about the end result, we have to reexamine how much safety we’re willing to give up in the name of liberty and push the government in whatever direction we set. Then we have to keep our eyes on the road instead of falling asleep at the wheel.

I admit all that is easier said than done. Democracy is a messy thing. Good people have a bitch of a time reaching consensus. We’re all conflicted and challenged by personal demons every day, and it can be hard to overcome those things to give better government the effort necessary. We’re all busy with family and work, which usually leaves little time for anything else.

Change is hard. But if we want it that badly, we have to work for it.

Edward Snowden

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I’m Not a Hero

In the three-plus years I’ve been writing this blog, I frequently get messages from people telling me I’m a hero for opening up about my mental health experiences. It always makes me wince.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2Q15PJacTtgzXFUErQXDSd]

A new wave of hero labeling hit after a Forbes article came out about my turning OCD into a career strength. One tweet read:

New hero: @BillBrenner70, #OCD survivor, stigma killer, & tech journo who says mental illness can help execs succeed: onforb.es/14olwPK

I appreciate that people find value in what I’m doing, and I love getting feedback from readers. But when someone calls me a hero, I get uncomfortable because I have a different idea of what a hero is. I tend to see heroes the old-fashioned way: someone who risks their life to help others. The image of first responders and bystanders rushing into the smoke to care for the wounded after the Boston Marathon bombings comes to mind.

I’m just someone who talks about the challenges we all have. It falls under the category of “Everybody does it. I just talk about it.”

Useful, yes. Heroic? I don’t think so. I’m just a man who makes mistakes and tries hard to get life right.

Erin suggested I don’t like being called a hero because I feel pressure to live up to the title and that I fear the possibility of failing to measure up. I think there’s truth to that.

Whatever the case may be, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I just want people to have realistic expectations of me.

But then that wish isn’t very realistic, is it? We’re going to see people through our own biases, distastes, hopes and dreams. That’s the human way.

I’ll keep trying to remember that.

Cavill, Man of Steel