By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ Back in the day when I was an undergraduate at the University of Florida, I wondered what to choose as my ‘major’: English or Journalism. Well, that was back in the ‘60s, so what else could I do but drop out and head for Greenwich Village in New York City? (Well, not exactly. I ended up working at the Countee Cullen library in Harlem.) Sitting through drearisome Botany classes while the world was changing in the street outside was anathema to my smoldering idealism, my desire to ‘make the world a better place’.
Now, many years later, I vacillate between being ashamed of such bone-headed idealism (The world has not and never will become any better than it is now, but it could become worse) and then ashamed of being ashamed because my basic nature is founded on squelched hope and squashed dreams, and I am wrong to laugh scornfully at what I once believed in. After all, maybe it’s only me who has changed, tarnished by time and delivered into decrepitude by years of ‘blowing in the wind.’ I know in my heart that there is nothing worse – nor more irrelevant – than a grumbling old Snot whose time has passed, even if, amid the muttering there may be a kernel of wisdom and a lucid pronouncement of Old Truths being violated again and again by the ignorant mobs in the thoroughfares.
In life we seek objects of elusive Beauty, we venerate ephemeral Youth, but we worship Power. And unless you own the town, there is nothing more powerless than an old human being.
So in the end I became an English teacher who dabbles in journalism (if writing incessant blogs can be labeled as such). Anyway, nobody really knows or cares much what really defines ‘journalism’. Social media has changed all that. All kidding aside, what Social Media has done is reveal to me, beyond my wildest dreams, just how fucking stupid most people are. Or choose to show themselves as being. Is it that SM (or is it ‘S&M’?) only attracts the loudest and most vulgar? I like to believe that somewhere out there, minding their own business, are serious folk who have better things to do than pollute the internet with one crazy blast of hot air after another. Here I go ‘hoping’ again, but I hope this time I am right. What I see instead – every time I check the news (and it is part of my job to do so) – is hysteria and hatred.
I search my soul to try to remember if it has always been this way, the difference being the presence of a platform for the now constant public braying by those who should stifle themselves or be stifled – or if the past was somehow more authentic, patient, circumspect, and mindful of well-thought-out values. I assure you, I am no elitist, and anybody (I wonder who) that reads my material is aware that I know all the naughty words. But I have a keen eye and ear for quality of expression, and it doesn’t matter (or I try to keep it that way) whether I agree or disagree with the view I am presented with. What I look for is a reasoned, articulate voice because, if I respect the author, I am more likely to respect his/her ideas and opinions.
Instead, what I usually get is an agenda. Plus s very, very selective narrative that sits atop the agenda with no more objectivity than a ten-cent conspiracy theory, and the sound effects are invariably strident, self-righteous, and often phony. Attention-grabbing. Viral-seeking. If you want to get anywhere near what sounds like it might be close to the truth, you must read a slew of articles and listen to a round of podcasts. Then, like a penitent dude reaming his way through a colossal pile of shit in search of the wedding ring he lost after an argument with his ‘ball-and-chain’ (as the British sometimes refer to their wives) – you might, I say you might arrive at a notion of what is or isn’t valid. And of course by the next day none of it is true anymore.
There are a number of reasons why inane gibberish, hotshot razmatazz, knee-jerk name-calling (“Nazi, Nazi, Nazi!”), belittling bullying and ecstatic abuse followed by self-worshiping self-righteousness, and, above all sheer evil-spirited IGNORANCE all hold sway. One of these reasons has to do with attention span. Adults don’t have any and neither do their children. Moreover, many people think that the best way to do anything is at top speed. The Nano Second is their God and Convenience their Guardian Angel. One can only wonder what their anniversary dinners and love-making are like. But I am sure that the people of the past would have been the same if they had had the wherewithal. Those TV dinners they used to have to cook in the oven would have gone straight in the microwave.
Don’t ever bet on human virtue. In the past, people did suspicious, eccentric things like have face-to-face conversations, read books, and keep diaries and journals because they had fuck-all else to do besides work. The slowness of days and years (in contrast with limited life expectancy) meant that kids and adults alike had to be creative and inventive (similar but not identical in meaning). Let’s think for a moment about books. OK, the truth is that there were more illiterate people back then and not as many books. If you want to go the ‘progressive’ route you can say – and it is fair to do so – that not everyone had a voice or the chance to produce the literature we take for granted today. Women and People of Color had no mass audience. Such institutional censorship was a real crime against humanity, and I am being serious.
Moreover, if it’s a numbers game you want, the truth is that there are more Poetry seminars (and thus more poets) on university campuses today than ever before. In terms of sheer arithmetic, therefore, we live in the most literate society the world has ever known. So much for the romantic past and celebration of the Age of Shakespeare (a handful of court-based poets and a sea of faceless people who couldn’t sign their own names). I told you, I believe in accuracy and in being fair.
Nevertheless, the world suffers because, although everyone knows how to read and write, many choose not to. As a teacher, I can’t tell you how many students I have who only scan the ‘Cliffnotes’ and never open the book (nothing new, to be fair, except that now it seems a regular formula instead of an anomaly or lazy bad habit.) What’s worse, nowadays when I assign a response essay to the great novel they didn’t read, instead of struggling through some kind of (usually) half-baked excuse for an essay (with brilliant exceptions now and then), they are increasingly turning to ChatGPT. So they produce artificial essays (a dead giveaway most of the time) – almost comical renditions, so far apart from the flawed sample they gave me at the beginning of our lessons that it’s hard to keep from laughing in their face.
The final product is something along the lines of an essay they didn’t write based on a book they didn’t read. If you didn’t see their countenance right in front of you, you’d swear they didn’t even exist at all, that they were just figments of the same controlling Imagination that is running the videogame of Human Existence. Nothing but pretend, pretend, pretend. And what can I do? Call them on it? “Hey you cheating little fucker, I’m on to you!!!!” –? No, you can’t do that, much as I’d like to. I teach privately (freelance) and if I insult the kid he/she will quit. And that doesn’t even factor in the parents, many of whom blithely assume that their kids are all geniuses and the teacher an adversarial, know-nothing cocksucker.
So what I do is scan their ‘essays’ for words such as ‘prodigious’, ‘impecunious’ and ‘redoubtable’ – and ask them what these words mean. The looks I get are as blank and forlorn as the windows of abandoned houses. So I gently remind them that since they are the ‘author’ of the essay, is it unreasonable for me to ask what the words that they themselves have used… actually mean? They fiddle and fumble, blush and blink, then corpse like actors who have forgotten their lines. And turn around and do it again next time.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I suffer from a chronic disease called the “Awfuckits”. Which means, sooner or later, I just say “Aw, fuck it.” And I think that’s what a lot of teachers do. They don’t do it because they prefer it that way, but because it is easier than driving yourself crazy and accomplishing nothing in the face of (if you teach in the public schools, which I refuse to) some very dangerous ‘students’, uncooperative or absent parents, and horseshit administrators who care only about public relations. So sometimes I just turn on a video entitled “How not to be such a dumbass”, and read a book while they pretend to watch it – which mostly they don’t, preferring to message their friends instead. At least I get to enjoy a good book that way.
I am telling you this only because it is a sign of the times. And here I will sound EXTREMELY old-fashioned, but I will say it anyway. : We Live in an Age Without Shame.
Truthfully, as I check back over the last paragraphs I wrote, I see that the same principle applies to me too. Years ago (not that many), I would never have dreamed of using language like that in something I intended to publish. Nor confess in such a cavalier manner to basically quitting on the dullest or more manipulative of my students. Now, right or wrong, I feel completely justified in doing so. Why? Because that’s how people talk and think, and I no longer see any reason in expressing myself in lofty language that wouldn’t make a dent in anyone anyway. Better just to say what I mean and mean what I say. No holds barred.
That’s the era we live in, folks. Remember a guy named Jerry Springer on American TV? He was one smart Jew. Remember Don King, the fight promoter? One smart Black man. These two guys understood America better than a room full of Sociology and Psychology professors. They saw where it was all headed. Perhaps I am wrong (though I don’t think I am wrong), but in the past the evening news on NBC, ABC, and CBS in America and the BBC in the UK was about reporting the news in a straightforward, informative manner. It was NOT Entertainment. Ok, sure, Ratings were important, but this was the reward for quality of reporting, NOT how sexy the anchor was. Connie Chung and Angela Rippon were excellent professionals, bonafide journalists. It wasn’t a question of how fuckable they were. Walter Cronkite was the greatest TV journalist who ever lived, in my book, and he was a real Mensch, not a carnival barker or sensation seeker. In sports, Jim McKay stands out. I remember how Cronkite handled the Kennedy assassination and McKay the murder of the Israeli weightlifters at the Munich Olympics. With professionalism, accuracy, and Dignity, in the face of grief and shock unbearable and impossible to fully conceal..
Just imagine it now. A fucking feeding frenzy. And the strange thing is, I seriously, seriously doubt that anyone would care. You don’t believe me? Then just take note of the way the news outlets will nurse and massage a mass murder, turning it into headline after headline, until the next big ‘scoop’ happens, like some gilded skank celebrity wearing a see-through gown at the Oscars or the closing of a McDonald’s in Madagascar – and just watch the Candlelight Vigil disappear from the screen. It’s all about what is trending, what can be sensationalized.
And, as I say, There is No Shame. Let’s face it, we have all cheated sometime, whether on a school exam or on our income tax. These days I am reading about prominent people like the Canadian Prime Minister plagiarizing his dissertation at Oxford. Before that, it was the ‘progressive’ pro-Palestine female African American president at Harvard. Even the revered and justifiable celebrated Martin Luther King allegedly fudged on his own dissertation at Stanford. Scammers on the internet are more populous than rats along the river or ticks on a country hound.
Olympic athletes cheat. Catch them, ask them, and they’ll say they had to or they would have had no chance at winning. Men cheat on their wives, and wives cheat on their husbands (here women have the advantage because they can fake orgasms). A long time ago I noticed that the Wise Potato Chips company was selling brightly packaged bags of the crunchy stuff big enough to park a Volkswagen in, but when you opened it, all the fucking chips were sitting in a little pile at the bottom. That was 60 years ago, but I still remember. I would say that public life is 75% fake and its practitioners are guilty of some kind of elaborate ruse or falsehood at least as often. We live in a tsunami of the superficial.
At least in the past, people acted like they were ashamed when they got caught, whether they really were or not. Now they don’t even pretend to be ashamed unless they think they’ll get their death penalty reduced to life without possibility of parole. The more of an ass you can make yourself look like in public, the further you’ll go. Politicians have caught onto this as well. Trump talks shit and so do phony race-baiters like Crockett and Ocasio. If I say, “I politely disagree with you,” no one notices. If you say, “You are racist Nazi intent on genocide” – you may well go viral.
Social Media is responsible for practically all of this. Designed to liberate the democratic spirit, it has instead acted as a catapult for the glorification of jackals and jackasses coming from all directions. For reasons my colleague and friend Artem has explained in eloquent (and civil) language, Social Media discourages reasonable discourse and fair play, and encourages wild ejaculations of froth which reflect on the idiotic venom of its most persistent contributors. What passes for journalism takes its lessons from Social Media. And what passes for the spirit of inquiry and attainment of knowledge and wisdom at universities takes its cue from Identity Politics, which is energized by…Social Media mentality.
Using myself as a pathetic example. I am a lifelong liberal who Social Media has turned into a snarling, rabid dingo. Shame on me. I guess I am just weak. But in all honesty, I am full of hatred. Full of it. Pathetic indeed.
It is one reason why, after I wake up smiling, singing, saying Good Morning to the world, as soon as I weaken and check what’s trending in the news, I begin to hate every fucking thing on the planet. Then I look out the window at birds winging across the sky or a dog loping along the street. And I realize, with stunning swiftness, that I haven’t lost the ability to marvel or make merry at all. In the wake of a world mobilized on dross, bunk, and bullshit, every glimpse of natural innocence is an unexpected taste of honey.
