The Joy of Hate

All opinions expressed in this book are my own, and nobody else’s. So don’t blame others for my churlishness. I take full responsibility for any outrage caused. And for those of you who are new to my work, and find it reprehensible, remember that I’ve done nothing to hide who I am, or what I’m about. Enjoy!

You know what really pisses me off? People who are always pissed off. Or pretend to be pissed off. We’ve created a new, frantic world of the enraged, the phony grievance, the manufactured outrage. If you make fun of something or say something truthful, someone, somewhere will be unhappy. Or say they’re unhappy, even when they’re not. When they’re bored. When they’re lonely. When they need attention. They come for you, whining, crying, screaming. And they are coming for you—the children of the corn, with a platform.

This new rising tide of constant outrage has been fueled, no doubt, by something called the Internet (which has intensified everything, including my home business selling novelty pumpkins). It has led, along with cable news (where I currently reside), to an apology brigade, comprising shrill scolds who overpopulate both sides of the political spectrum. When Rush Limbaugh says something that thin-skinned tools define as “mean-spirited,” sundry CNN talk show guests (most of whom never listen to Rush) demand an apology. When Bill Maher says something considered repugnant toward women, conservative watchdogs organize petitions. Everyone wants everyone else fired. No one rests until they
get a scalp of contrition, a symbol of victory revealing to all that you just bested someone you don’t like.

Then, of course, everyone moves on to someone else. And it doesn’t even matter whether they’re truly outraged or not. In fact, it’s just physically impossible to be this outraged all the time. You’d pull a muscle or throw your hip out. Still, it goes on—an endless game of political ping-pong—with both sides unaware that they sound almost exactly alike.

The bystanders, however, are different. The media, for the most part, tends to dismiss the “outrage” perpetrated by the left, often dismissing the slurs and smears as the product of “edgy comedy,” only because they rabidly agree with whatever’s being said. You can make ruthless fun of Michele Bachmann, for the editors of the major newsweeklies think she’s nuts, too. Remember the “wild-eyed”
Newsweek
cover? I do, and it still aroused me.

This liberal pass, however, is not afforded to those on the right. If Maher calls someone a slut, the outcry lasts a few days. When Rush says it, the outrage lasts as long as a case of herpes. It flares up and never really goes away (or so they tell me).

But I admit, as well, that there are times I seem angry when I’m really not. Oh, some things piss me off. But in a few minutes, I’ll see something fuzzy and huggable, like a cute puppy wearing a leather cap with matching chaps, and I’ll forget what I was angry about. But many times I’m angry in the same way I’m happy—it’s a biochemical commotion in some excitable part of the brain that can be triggered by anything. It’s more about me than the thing that makes me happy, or ticked. If I’m yelling at the TV, chances are it’s not the TV’s fault. It could be the fact that there isn’t a TV there at all, and I’ve been yelling at a window. I hate windows. I see right through them. (I got that joke from a Bazooka Joe wrapper.)

What I have come to realize, however, is that the people who claim to be angry or upset have a bigger agenda. First, they use the language of outrage to score points against people they don’t like, or to make themselves feel important. But manufactured outrage is also the freeway to ideological success—the quickest way to win not only an argument but also a career in academics, political activism, or modern dance. To be aggrieved means you’ve created an impenetrable wall of “feeling” around you: no one can question you, because you’re “outraged.” If this book doesn’t sell, surely I will be outraged—and I will certainly write a book about that.

I hate the outraged so much, you could say I’m outraged by their outrage. The eternally angry were born from the sixties, cultivated in the seventies, coddled in the eighties, stoked in the nineties. The politically correct didn’t die, they all just got agents.

And this new outrage came into being via one phenomenon: tolerance. The idea of tolerance—a seemingly innocuous concept—has now become something else entirely: a way to bludgeon people into shutting up, piping down, and apologizing, when the attacked are often the ones who hold the key to common sense. They speak an unspeakable truth, and they get clobbered by the Truncheon of Tolerance. Tolerance has turned normal people into sheep/parrot hybrids, followers in word and deed—bloating and squawking at everyone in a psychological torment not experienced since Dave Matthews picked up a guitar.

Don’t get me wrong. Tolerance is a good thing. It wasn’t long ago that a lot of awful things were going on in our country. Blacks were treated as chattel, gays were seen as defective humans, and women couldn’t vote (well, that last one might be worth revisiting—just because suffragettes are so sexy). But unlike a lot of countries, America actually changed, eliminating or reducing forms of nastiness that this very young country inherited from
other older, nastier places. Remember, racism has been around since there were races. And someone is still selling slaves, right now. (I just rented one off Craigslist. His name is Marco and he’s a bodybuilding Capricorn who loves Thai boxing.) Modern slavery can be found in Sudan and Mozambique, so I guess most of America’s civil rights activists don’t see the point. If it won’t get you prime real estate in front of cameras chanting about injustice in America, then why bother.

I also realized that because of tolerance, there are no repercussions for bad behavior. And bad behavior won’t just continue, but will accelerate, because the tolerati (a name I have coined to describe those who traffic in this repressive tolerance, and hereby trademark, ensuring my comfortable retirement in Bora-Bora with a small army of half-naked manservants) provide the grease for the wheels. Think of the latest stories on teens beating the crap out of adults at movie theaters, fast food restaurants, and subway stops while people look on. No one wants to call them trash, because—well, that’s just hurtful. And hurtful often means, “painfully true.”

I believe I have identified an insidious kind of entitlement born from a false sense of victimhood. If you are identified as an offensive party dripping with intolerance, especially in this modern age, then you’re powerless. You can be accused of anything and you’re guilty. The shoe is now on the other foot, and because I’m a straight male of European descent who smokes and is on a network the left hates, that foot is firmly up my ass. And trust me, it’s a matter of time before it goes up yours for one reason or another. Permanently. With a steel-tipped toe.

Which is why I hate phony outrage and the tolerance that breeds it. Hate it with a passion. I hate the tolerati, and I hate the toleratic. The toleratic is a person who claims to tolerate anything
until he, she, or it meets a conservative. Tolerati describes a group of toleratics grouped in a social setting, like a murder of annoying crows, nattering vacuous opinions and molesting the gnome in your front yard.

I see our country under attack—not by offensive people like me, but by people who claim to be offended. By people like me. See, nothing offends me more than people who are always offended.

I am referring to people who hear jokes that hurt their feelings, and instead of simply assuming the joke-teller is a jerk, they resort to letter-writing campaigns, and they never spell my name right. I am talking about people who wage war over a comment, yet would never think of addressing real behaviors that actually cause actual problems. Yep, they might yell at you for smoking or joking, but they’d never actually address the guy on the corner selling drugs. (Because then they might die. Or worse, he might be part of an ethnic group, which makes you a racist for even looking at him.) They’ll condemn the pope for the silliness of organized religion, but then later they tell us we should understand those who—in the name of religion—want to kill us. They’ll order us to “question authority,” then they’ll parrot the latest left-wing attack blog funded by George Soros. That’s the funny thing about tolerance: it’s actually an avenue for bad behavior, instead of respect for the good stuff. It’s why, in the name of tolerance, there are so many mass murderers in the world running countries. We have now made it a rule to respect those who refuse to respect us.

Right now we live in a world where if someone perceives you as “offensive,” they win. Meanwhile, the real offenders get a walk. They can wield the weapon of “tolerance” to protect real scummy behavior. Like any act committed by a radical Islamist or past member of Menudo. (Ricky Martin still has my swim trunks.)

As I have gotten older, I have come to realize how the things normally deemed offensive don’t bother me anymore. I’m speaking of sexual acts, explicit lyrics in music, garlic knots, staplers, tweed scarves.

But it’s the mundane, everyday acceptance of stupidity that I cannot tolerate. For example, I don’t find racist jokes offensive. I just find them … racist. And that’s helpful. Racist jokes help you identify racists. If you like being around racists, great. If you don’t, then leave. So what’s offensive to me instead?

Public displays of affection—gay, straight, hermaphroditic, animal
. I have a rule: Anything that can be done privately does not need to be performed publicly. It’s why I love the gays but I hate their parades. Actually, I hate all parades. Marching to celebrate something you’re born as seems silly. (As I write this, St. Patrick’s Day is in full bore in Midtown. It’s delightful how celebrating a heritage requires you to pick fights with strangers and then pee in a parking garage. The upside—the sea of clover-painted drunks moving in unison—might be the only green energy I’ve ever seen work.) And what’s the point of a parade anyway? A bunch of yahoos who share some affinity, walking in one direction? Who decided this was entertainment? For previous generations, this was called a migration, or more often, refugees fleeing for their lives.