Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 Read online

  Regardless of how these people came to believe these things, it’s time for them to be stopped. I don’t know anyone who died on September 11, but I know who was attacked. I was, and so were you. This is personal.

  I HATE WE

  Here are all the reasons I hate the ad for WE, the new Women’s Entertainment channel, that appears to be showing constantly at all times no matter which cable channel I am watching:

  First off, it features the nine billionth use of Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” to telegraph funky female togetherness. Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled that the song allows the members of Sister Sledge (who are, incidentally, actually sisters) to dine out and pay the occasional gas bill twenty-one years after the song hit the charts. But if I have to hear it one more time—ever—I may have to jab a sharpened Popsicle stick directly into an eardrum, and possibly not one of my own. That goes for Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” too. I mean, enough. You’ve survived, already. Now shut up.

  And anyway, it’s a lie. Women, as a class, aren’t a family. Just like men, some women like some other women, while absolutely hating the stinkin’ guts of others. I mean, good Lord, doesn’t anyone remember the gym shower scene in Carrie? (Playing “We are Family” in the background of that scene, now, that would have been a master stroke.) Demanding that all women fall into solidarity at the drop of an R&B hit is a little smug and cheap on WE’s part, particularly as what they’re supposed to fall in line for here is a cable channel.

  (But that’s the way it’s always done in advertising, in case you haven’t noticed. Women are always joyously banding to celebrate some damned thing or another, whether it’s women’s cable programming or zit creams or feminine napkins. One of the commercials that ranks high up there on my all-time Hate List is a recent pantyliner commercial in which a carefully multi-ethnic quartet of attractive young women hug each other enthusiastically while simultaneously shouting the name of the pantyliner brand. Forgive me, but I doubt that the natural expulsion of reproductive detritus into winged cotton batting has ever brought any group of women together, and if it has, well, those women are icky.)

  Moreover, if I were woman, I’d be sick and tired of the assumption that what I really wanted to do all the time was watch other women sit around on a pastel couch with throw pillows, drinking coffee from oversized mugs and talking to other women about women’s issues. I mean, hell. I’m a man, and just about the last thing I’d ever be doing is looking at some guys hanging out in a rumpus room, sitting on bar stools with their beers and talking about hot chicks and auto engines. Really, I’d rather die. Not just because it’s boring as Hell, but also because as much as I am a man (harumph, harumph), it’s not something that’s really worth thinking an awful lot about on a minute-to-minute basis. Yes, yes, I have a penis. Fine. Be that as it may, I have other stuff to do. I can’t imagine ever wanting to watch a show about men’s issues, much less an entire freakin’ network. This is why, not entirely coincidentally, I’ve never seen a single edition of ESPN SportsCenter.

  Back to the WE ad. Once we get past the soul-jangling tones of “We Are Family,” we get a montage of female celebrities—Victoria Williams, Cindy Crawford, and Faye Dunaway (carefully multi-ethnic!)—all declaring some of their various attributes. “I’m an actress. I’m an athlete. I’m a friend,” one of them modestly declares, as the camera zooms in to examine her perfect pores. Then another comes in to announce her curriculum vitae. Then another. After two or three of these, what I really wanted was to see Steve Miller show up and declare “I’m a joker. I’m a smoker. I’m a midnight toker.” Purely as a matter of gender, it would be inappropriate, but it would sure feel right.

  As I’ve previously alluded, I’m not a woman, but even as a man, there’s something condescending about these litanies of ability. The undertone behind the I’m all these things bullet points is that women still have to prove that they can do a whole bunch of things even though they’re women. While I’m not foolish enough to argue that women have achieved equality in all or even most things—women are still earning 80 cents to a man’s dollar simply because they don’t have testicles—I also don’t believe that women should feel compelled to qualify their successes through the prism of their gender. Any time you have to qualify your success, you implicitly diminish it.

  (I just mentioned this point to my wife, who thinks I’m reading a little much into the litanies. But I’ll stick to my guns here. Any time you see someone listing off accomplishments in an ad, it’s because they’ve done so despite adversity—medical ads do this sort of thing all the time. I just don’t think being a woman should be the equivalent of a chronic malady.)

  Also, it bugs me that all the women in the ad are strikingly attractive. It’s more proof that those who market to women consciously or unconsciously believe that women are swayed more by attractiveness than competence—which further calls into question the whole “I am. . .” thing. In her recital, Faye Dunaway declares “I’m a director.” After I was done rolling my eyes (she’s directed one cable movie in her whole life, and that for WE), I couldn’t help but wonder: What’s wrong with Betty Thomas? Or Penny Marshall? Or Mimi Leder? Each of these women are real directors, with $100 million grossing movies to their credit. I bet you one of them would have been happy to sign on as a spokesperson. They’re just not as good looking as Faye.

  I’ve nothing against good-looking women. Some of my best friends are good-looking women. But they ought to mix things up. I’ll say it: I want to see an ugly woman as a spokeswoman for a women’s network. Ugly men are out there all the time—look at Larry King, for God’s sake. He looks like someone’s talking underwear. Why not give America a spokeswoman who ain’t much to look at but is competent as Hell? If accomplishments actually count for women, this ought to be a no-brainer.

  In fact, I even have a suggestion: CNN’s Candy Crowley. Crowley is without a doubt the lumpiest newsperson on TV, and every time I see her, I give a little mental cheer. You don’t doubt she’s a damn fine reporter, because as stupidly obsessed with looks at TV reporting is, particularly with female correspondents, Crowley nevertheless gets airtime. Lots of of airtime (she’s CNN’s senior political correspondent). She’s got journalism awards up the wazoo, too. Give her her own hour on WE (or Lifetime, or Oxygen, or wherever), and I bet she’d do a hell of a job.

  So why not make her—or someone like her—a spokesperson? Does anyone doubt she’s got the skills and accomplishments? Does WE’s braintrust actually believe that women—their merry band of sisters—are so hopelessly shallow that they couldn’t or wouldn’t accept a physically unattractive but otherwise qualified woman as a public face for their network?

  Well, I know where I stand on that question. The whole problem with the WE ad is that from the music to the words out of the attractive spokeswomen’s mouths, it assumes far too little out of its audience. It panders rather than inspires. The individual components bug me personally, but the overall statement is one I find truly depressing for women. Think about it, women: This is supposed to be a network for you, and it can’t appeal to you any better than this. Isn’t that sad?

  MULTIPLE

  IDENTICAL

  NEPHEWS

  Watching children’s commercials also made me aware that Froot Loop spokescreature Toucan Sam has joined the legions of single male animated characters who have multiple identical nephews with whom they share adventures. In the commercial in question, Sam and his multiple identical nephews are in a jungle, plundering massive fruit, when Sam accidentally drains the body of water on which they travel, causing the fruit to swirl together.

  I’m sure someone more Marxist than I could make some sort of allusion to this commercial and how the colonial ambitions of the Europeans in Africa caused wholesale destruction of habitat and tribal identity (represented by the draining of the water and the swirling together of the “fruit”), but I’m more of the opinion they’re just trying to sell those new Swirled Together Froot Loops. What c
an I say, the capitalist stooges got to me.

  The phenomenon of multiple identical nephews (henceforth to be known as “MIN”) in the animated medium has always astounded me, because these MIN always seem to arrive out of nowhere, with no verifiable provenance. Were you aware that Toucan Sam had siblings? Who are they, and what do they do? Is “Toucan Bob” selling radial tires outside Columbus? Perhaps “Toucan Fran” has a job as the saucy mascot of a tropical-themed strip bar in Georgia. Obviously they can’t make ends meet, otherwise they’d never have sent off their children to stay with Sam, whose peripatetic life philosophy (“Follow Your Nose”) doesn’t seem to encourage the sort of stability and routine small children need and crave.

  Of course, there’s always the supposition that these “nephews” aren’t actually nephews at all, but the bastard children of the animated characters in question, whose linage has been muddied for the sake of the wayward parent’s career. This probably isn’t the case with Toucan Sam himself, whose mannerisms and rainbow flag beak prove him to be clearly and serenely gay in that veddy-British, I-was-buggered-by-my-sixth-form-chums-at-Eton-and-it-was-the-best-time-of-my-life sort of way. But it’s pretty obviously a viable theory for Donald Duck and for Popeye, both of whose MINs are spitting images of the adults themselves. Particularly Popeye’s, whose MINs come complete with the sailor’s trademark corncob pipe (Popeye also has the mysterious Sweetpea to explain away; perhaps this is the real-life consequence of having a girl in every port).

  Now, this sort of deception may have been necessary during the days of the Hayes Code, when these characters got their start. But as we’re now approaching the millennium, I say it’s time to let these beloved animated characters claim their children as their own. No doubt Huey, Dewey and Louie are already screwed up by the fact that they never see their “real” parents, because those “real” parents don’t exist. Why not let Donald start the healing process by declaring they they are, in fact, his sons—his Multiple Identical Illegitimate Sons?

  Aren’t we a big enough country to accept the fact that even animated characters need love too, and that those needs sometimes lead to multiple identical issue? Haven’t Donald and Popeye and all the rest already been fathers to these kids, supporting them, loving them, and taking them on all sorts of wacky, six-minute long adventures? I say, let the charade end. Write your local congressmen and animation producers now. The sooner Huey, Dewie and Louie call Donald Duck “dad,” the better off we’ll all be.

  ON

  CARL SAGAN

  When I was eleven, I thought Carl Sagan was the coolest guy in the world. And that was because he was speaking right at me. At the age of 11, in 1980, I was a kid utterly convinced that he was going to grow up to be an astronomer—I loved the stars, I loved the science, I loved the toys—and here on my TV came Sagan, suave in his red turtleneck and buff jacket, surrounded by special effects and Vangelis music and telling everyone (but especially me) about how the cosmos is everything that ever was, everything that is, and everything that ever will be.

  I fell for Carl with the sort of blissful rapture that I strongly suspect is only available to pre-pubescent geeks, a sort of nerd crush that, to be clear, had no sexual component, but had that same sort of swoony intensity. This was the guy I wanted to be when I was age eleven. Sagan sits as a member of my triumvirate of cultural heroes, the other two being John Lennon and H.L. Mencken. It’s a odd trio of personal heroes, I admit, but then I’m still a little odd. But even among John and Henry, Carl came in first. Maybe it was the turtlenecks.

  I’m a quarter century older than the eleven-year-old boy whose mother held a weekly viewing of Cosmos over his head as a bargaining chip for good behavior, and I’m still a great admirer of Carl Sagan, primarily because he did something I see as immensely important: he popularized science and with patience and good humor brought it into people’s homes. He did it through Cosmos, most obviously, but he also did it every time he popped up on The Tonight Show and talked with celebrity fluidity about what was going on in the universe. He was the people’s scientist. This is not to say that you’d look at Sagan and see him down at the NASCAR race; it is to say that he could easily use a NASCAR race to explain, say, relativistic speeds and what it means for traveling through the universe.

  This is important stuff. Getting science in front of people in a way they can understand—without speaking down to them—is the way to get people to support science, and to understand that science is neither beyond their comprehension nor hostile to their beliefs. There need to be scientists and popularizers of good science who are of good will, who have patience and humor, and who are willing to sit with those who are skeptical or unknowing of science and show how science is already speaking their language. Sagan knew how to do this; he was uncommonly good at it.

  I find that inspirational. As it happens, I am not a scientist—the flesh was willing, but the math skills were, alas, weak—but I write about science with some frequency; I’ve even fulfilled a life goal of writing an astronomy book, The Rough Guide to the Universe, of which I am about to compile a second edition. In my writing and presentation of science, I look to Sagan for guidance. Nearly all of what happens in the universe can be explained in the way that nearly any person can understand; all it requires is the desire to explain it and the right language. Sagan had the desire and language. I like to think I do too, in part because I learned my lessons from him.

  I am aware of the need to avoid hagiography. I have an idealized version of Carl Sagan in my head, one that is notably absent any number of flaws that the real Carl Sagan had to have had simply because he was human. My connection to Sagan comes from some limited number of hours of television and a finite number of books, and in both cases the man was edited for my consumption. This is one of the reasons why, unlike the 11-year-old version of me, I don’t want to be Carl Sagan, and I’m not even entirely sure I want to be much like him as a person, if only because, at the end of it, I don’t know him as a person.

  What I do know is that I like his ideas. I like his love of science. I like his faith in humanity. I like how he saw us reaching for things greater than ourselves, because it was in our nature and because it was a fulfillment of our nature. I like how he shared his enthusiasm for the entire universe with everyone and believed that everyone could share in that enthusiasm. These are things that, in giving them to everyone, he also gave to me, first as an 11-year-old and then continuing on. I’ve accepted them with thanks and made them part of who I am. If I use them well, I may be fortunate enough to share them with you as they were shared with me.

  THINGS ONE

  SHOULD NOT

  FORGET

  Jonah Goldberg, who has never once used someone else’s verbal flubs for mocking purposes, ever, gets annoyed that people are amused that during a talk at the Heritage Foundation (update, 2:13pm: actually, in this Salon interview; he apparently himself forgot where he said it, and this is what I get for following his memory on the subject; editing now to reflect provenance) he momentarily forgot why Mussolini was called a fascist, i.e., because he was the founder of the Fascist Party:

  Any fair minded person would agree that I simply misspoke. Instead these bandersnatches ignore the rest of the entire speech and focus on this unfortunate but entirely innocuous flub as “proof” of my total and complete ignorance and dishonesty.

  My apologies for giving these buffoons the ammo, but anyone persuaded by this and this alone is beyond reasoning with anyway.

  Jonah, dude, I don’t doubt that you misspoke. That’s pretty obvious. But, really. How does one—particularly one purporting to write a book on fascism—forget, even for a minute, that Mussolini was called a fascist because he was a Fascist? And not just a Fascist, he was the Fascist; indeed, the Platonic Ideal of a Fascist. Maybe you were nervous about being interviewed—you do it so infrequently, after all—but it’s kind of a big goof. We Americans may not know much about Mussolini, but we know three things: He made trains run on time, he b
ore an unsettling resemblance to George C. Scott, and that he was a goddamn Fascist. It’s not something one easily forgets, nor should forget, especially when one is, say, talking about fascism to the press. Try to do better next time, Mr. Goldberg. You’ll look less of an ass.

  So that’s taken care of. Now I want to make the point that, aside from the fact that Goldberg had a mental burp when he forgot Mussolini was called a fascist because he was a fascist, OG style, yo, he was also way off with the rest of the statement in question. Which is:

  Mussolini was born a socialist, he died a socialist, he never abandoned his love of socialism, he was one of the most important socialist intellectuals in Europe and was one of the most important socialist activists in Italy, and the only reason he got dubbed a fascist and therefore a right-winger is because he supported World War I.

  Well, out here beyond the conservative event horizon, we’re pretty sure Mussolini, at the top of his authoritarian game, was happily right-wing and not a socialist. We know this because Benito—old school Fascist, fascist before fascist was cool—tells us so in the document in which he lays out the doctrine of Fascism:

  Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the “right”, a Fascist century.