The Romance of Freaking
Back in the day...that would be my day, not yours...those who fried their heads with massive doses of hallucinogens and were still able to talk were sometimes called freaks. However, when they flopped around on the ground and made warthog noises, this was not referred to as a freak-out. In my neck of the woods, which was the urban East Coast, we called such events a horror show and, if we lived in Boston, a wicked horror show.
All this is ancient dull history, of course, and you can judge how ancient it is when I tell you it was once possible to behave badly. It was even likely among those of us who were very young, hip, and busy grossing out our parents. That we succeeded in appalling the older generation simply by growing out our hair is just one indication that the collective zeitgeist had a massive broomstick up its ass. The 50's and early sixties were starchy times.
However, by 1966 or s0, even among our admittedly lax peer group, lousy behavior was noted. A white person with a permed Afro, carrying a copy of The Fire next Time would likely be chided for co-opting our cultural suffering. Hang on to a joint too long and your bogarting would be rebuked. Some worry-warts tormented themselves over the need to kill their parents, come The Revolution, since mom and pop wouldn't be happy in our balmy Socialist utopia.
And now, proving they don't have an original idea in their roomy yet empty heads, the Republicans are aping their constituents' wretched behavior. I'm referring to last night's Joe Wilson blaring "You lie!" to a sitting president in the middle of a policy speech. I would label this a Category 9 Wicked Horror Show but, seemingly, everyone has shrugged it off and mumbled something about how it's time to move ahead. Well, and so it is, but ahead to what?
Joe Wilson, this Joe Wilson, not the unfortunate Other, is what I would call a freak, not in the counter-culture sense but giving it the black meaning, as in, I dunno. He's a freak. Here freak is used to convey a kind of weirdness not worth figuring out. A beloved and dead aunt of mine would have said Joe behaved inexpensively, and I'll go along with that too, while still mourning the loss of civility.
The nice thing about manners is that they save so much time and trouble. You don't have to make it up as you go along. When observing a fat-ass wearing a fisherman's hat festooned with Lipton's teabags and waving a Hitler poster, you don't agonize over how to deal with this person. A blank smile will suffice, and if pressed, you can murmur ambiguously, "How utterly delightful," an all-occasion remark I find quite useful.
As Judith Martin notes in her Miss Manners guise, "Etiquette doesn't have the great sanctions that the law has. But the main sanction we do have is in not dealing with (odious) people and isolating them because their behavior is unbearable."
I wonder how we forgot that.
All this is ancient dull history, of course, and you can judge how ancient it is when I tell you it was once possible to behave badly. It was even likely among those of us who were very young, hip, and busy grossing out our parents. That we succeeded in appalling the older generation simply by growing out our hair is just one indication that the collective zeitgeist had a massive broomstick up its ass. The 50's and early sixties were starchy times.
However, by 1966 or s0, even among our admittedly lax peer group, lousy behavior was noted. A white person with a permed Afro, carrying a copy of The Fire next Time would likely be chided for co-opting our cultural suffering. Hang on to a joint too long and your bogarting would be rebuked. Some worry-warts tormented themselves over the need to kill their parents, come The Revolution, since mom and pop wouldn't be happy in our balmy Socialist utopia.
And now, proving they don't have an original idea in their roomy yet empty heads, the Republicans are aping their constituents' wretched behavior. I'm referring to last night's Joe Wilson blaring "You lie!" to a sitting president in the middle of a policy speech. I would label this a Category 9 Wicked Horror Show but, seemingly, everyone has shrugged it off and mumbled something about how it's time to move ahead. Well, and so it is, but ahead to what?
Joe Wilson, this Joe Wilson, not the unfortunate Other, is what I would call a freak, not in the counter-culture sense but giving it the black meaning, as in, I dunno. He's a freak. Here freak is used to convey a kind of weirdness not worth figuring out. A beloved and dead aunt of mine would have said Joe behaved inexpensively, and I'll go along with that too, while still mourning the loss of civility.
The nice thing about manners is that they save so much time and trouble. You don't have to make it up as you go along. When observing a fat-ass wearing a fisherman's hat festooned with Lipton's teabags and waving a Hitler poster, you don't agonize over how to deal with this person. A blank smile will suffice, and if pressed, you can murmur ambiguously, "How utterly delightful," an all-occasion remark I find quite useful.
As Judith Martin notes in her Miss Manners guise, "Etiquette doesn't have the great sanctions that the law has. But the main sanction we do have is in not dealing with (odious) people and isolating them because their behavior is unbearable."
I wonder how we forgot that.
1 comment:
I'll have to tuck away that little "delightful" rejoinder for the future. Polite stock answer #1 for me is usually, "Thanks for sharing." Combined with a tight smile and a walk away, it usually gets me off Scott free.
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