Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You (19 page)

How does cool play into the rise of the single moms? It’s the cause. We’ve had hormones for millions of years—I certainly got my fair share—and humans are horny animals. But where we once valued scruples, now we mock them. Mercilessly.

Think about all the stuff pop culture derides. It almost entirely boils down to anything that champions delayed gratification. We’ve got seemingly benign sitcom characters instructing us that marriage is not a necessity for happiness (pick any episode of a
chick-centric sitcom) and we’ve got the even cooler ones featuring teenagers banging in cemeteries or sticking their fingers up first dates’ butts (both hilarious plot points in
Girls
—the most demeaning thing to happen to women since Juicy sweatpants). Married couples are portrayed as goofy and joyless; the singles are always smarter and having way more fun.

Look, I get it. I sound like Billy Graham. Or Dan Quayle (remember his criticism of
Murphy Brown
?) But maybe Quayle was right on a few things. And it’s not just old white guys who see where this is headed. Black conservatives get it too, which is why they are considered the least cool group in the country, ranking just beneath Maroon 5 and the Kardashians. (Maybe we could combine those two and maroon the Kardashians for five years? Just an idea.)

With cool trumping character, men no longer find marriage as enticing as they did forty years ago. Modern women, egged on by their eager and horny male friends, forfeited the most potent power they had: their vagina. A pro-abortion meme on Twitter goes by “brochoice,” and their message is simple—that limits on abortion limit their chances of having recreational sex. At least they’re honest about their desires, the scamps. The fact that some women praise a theory that makes them little more than receptacles for sperm seems slightly more than sad. And to an angry feminist (redundant), that comment makes me guilty of “slut-shaming”!

I’d say sleeping around leads to feelings of illegitimacy, but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But I know too many women who feel lost because they wasted a better part of their youthfulness pleasuring men who had no interest in sticking around. (I can safely say I was one of those men, and I feel pretty crummy
for it. But at least I didn’t leave a trail of little Gregs behind me, I hope. One little Greg is enough.)

As the pool of husbands and dads disappears, the government gets bigger in order to play that role. There is a connection between our willingness to sacrifice our scruples and the government’s willingness to step into our lives. Hence the 2012 campaign creation of “Julia” during President Obama’s reelection campaign. The Web campaign meant to show how the government will be there through every important step in a woman’s life—from school, to health, to work, to death. Instead it reminded me of how phony the cool independence of the aging single woman really is. They just exchanged one husband (a real, live, breathing one) for another (a government program).

But as the composite young woman, Julia is exalted by the cool, and the fantasy of a traditional life is ridiculed. Everywhere. Or more specifically, in Warwick, Rhode Island, where a mural in a high school had deeply angered … someone.

Talk about uncool. The painting was supposed to depict a man’s life, from youth to adulthood, ending with him standing with a woman and child, with a pair of wedding rings above their heads. I know—I can only imagine what’s next—a grown man and a boy playing catch? Why does it have to be “catch”? And why is the boy in pants? This rigid patriarchal dictatorship of gender roles has got to stop! Where is Julie Drizin?

The mural was being painted at Pilgrim High (which sounds like something you get from smoking corn husks), by a young artist named Liz Bierenday. No surprise—she was told by the vice principal that someone had complained about the offensive content. Apparently the mural didn’t reflect the “life experiences” of every single student there. According to the artist, she didn’t
mean to offend anyone. “I didn’t mean to offend anyone,” she said (see, I wasn’t lying there, was I?). She then explained that she was painting how she thought life would unfold. “Like after college you get a job and settle down.” She also said, “Like, I feel bad.”

I would too if I kept using the word “like” as punctuation. But, like, I’m on her side.

She actually was guiltier of a greater sin: She saw life the way her parents or grandparents saw it. It’s a prism that is so uncool these days, it’s comical. This young woman felt getting married and having kids and all the stuff that comes with it sounded kinda nice. You know, the way 99 percent of human civilization always has (except the French). Jesus, where the hell has she been the last twenty years? Settling down is for
losers
. You’re basically admitting you don’t have the guts to be your own person. Marriage means you’re just a half of a thing, when you can be a whole thing. A whole angry thing that hates other things!

The end result: The part of the mural featuring the wedding rings was painted over. But then a school superintendent insisted she finish the mural as she had planned. Which is a happy ending, if you like happy endings.

Truth is, these days “happy endings” means something else (ask Beckel) and living “happily ever after” is a fantasy for the uncool and stupid. You’ve got to be naive and irrelevant to buy into the appeal of a stable family environment—or believe that it might be a tad superior to its competing lifestyle. I bet you couldn’t get a feminist to admit a married-with-children life beats being a coprophilic activist sex worker who makes her own hours; the former gave up on her dreams to submit to a husband, and the latter is expressing her freedom from the normative views of traditional lifestyles! You go … coprophilic activist sex worker! You raise awareness with every orgasm!

So why are families uncool? Well, it’s cool to rebel against your family when you’re growing up. But you’re supposed to get over that, at some point. It’s called becoming an adult. Sure, you can hate Mom and Dad for a little bit (one year, maybe two, tops), and you usually return to the fold after admitting that they were right most of the time. But these days, a stable family is seen as uncool because extolling the virtues of such a unit excludes those who don’t live that way. And that is hurtful. And being hurtful is uncool. Would anyone have questioned the mural if it had been two gay centaurs copulating on a rainbow? (Probably not, and that would be great, since I’ve spent the last four months painting one in my basement. It’s been a struggle getting it right, but when it’s done, it’ll be worth all the money spent on nude escorts I used as models.)

Fact is, this student’s mural is about the most rebellious thing you’ve never heard of, and this girl, in my mind, is a modern-day Dennis Hopper on a Harley. Her thinking is against the predictable grain of the modern progressive. Is it wrong to say that one way of living is superior to another? Not that she was saying that, but so what if she was? People who live in a traditional family structure tend to do better in life. Although I am sure there are people who believe, after reading this story, that the poor girl needs to be deprogrammed, for it’s just untenable that, in this age, she would have such weird, uncool thoughts about “sex and gender roles.” She was probably abused! By her evil white dad! Who listens to Mark Levin! There must be some repressed memories of Satanic rituals in there somewhere!

In a nation governed by hurt feelings, it’s clear that this heathen simply doesn’t care about all the people different from herself. Should romantic novels be banned because lonely people out there might find them insensitive to their plight? Who do
you think reads them? Lonely people! What about sports? Should they be curtailed because they marginalize the uncoordinated? It’s one reason I never watch lacrosse. (There are many others.)

Never mind that when the public is presented with alternative views and lifestyles unlike those of the majority, the feelings of the majority are never considered. Empathy is only a one-way street.

Remember the elephant-dung-encrusted image of the Virgin Mary that was once brought to the Brooklyn Museum? (Which says more about Brooklyn than religion, incidentally.) No one asked me how I felt about it. In fact I don’t think anyone really gave a damn about the “feelings” of Christians, since movies and television have informed the world that we don’t have feelings. Instead, Christ-lovers just have prejudices, bad hair, and closeted feelings for the same sex.

In this country, a mural of two wedding rings is uncool, while a Virgin Mary made of dung is cool. What BS. Head to head, the marriage mural beats the dung art hands down, for it dares to say something modern art would never have the guts to say—that an innate desire for a traditional life isn’t so bad. And that delayed gratification beats immediate satisfaction, hands down. It’s healthier and more stable, and, oddly enough, offers you the freedom to do things you couldn’t do if your life were an unstable, angry pile of dung. As the king of the uncool, Ronald Reagan, once said, “Work and family are at the center of our lives, the foundation of our dignity as a free people.” Translated by me: You can’t be a freak without first having a foundation. (I think that’s what he meant.)

That message never bubbles up in the art world because it’s so uncool. And what passes for daring in art is really conformity. Conformity of the worst kind, in fact—censorship.

Which leads me to my solution to this mess—if you want
a traditional nuclear family to survive, what do you do? Perhaps it’s time to champion
that
as an alternative lifestyle. Make it sound rebellious and different. Because in reality, that’s what it’s become. It’s also tougher, by the way. Responsibility always is. But it’s just too Fred MacMurray for the progressive journals and the sad sacks who pretend to read them.

Treating family like an extreme sport may be the only way the cool might be tricked into thinking it’s a good thing. And before they know it, they’ll be mowing lawns, working sixty-hour weeks, and screaming at their kids to turn down the music. They will have turned into their parents, which is probably the coolest thing that could happen to them, ever.

Which leads me to another question. How uncool is it to be a married dad? Really uncool. How about a married mom? Super uncool.

Remember during the election when a Democratic strategist, Hilary Rosen, went after Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann? It was on CNN back in April 2012, when Rosen said that Romney had “never worked a day in her life.” Mind you, Ann had raised five sons—and if that’s not work, Rosen’s never seen a hamper full of men’s underwear. It qualifies as a Superfund site.

Because it was an election season, her attack on Ann got a lot of media attention, and Rosen quickly vanished from the scene in order to prevent further harm to her guy, President Obama. (The community organizer and no-show senator.) After all, her next trick might be criticizing the comatose for being lazy. Amazing that this lady is a PR expert. Judging from this screwup, it’s likely it was she who’s never worked a day in her life. It’s unlikely she ever worked a day outside of government, that’s for sure.

But forget the politics. The point of this screwup: It could only have occurred if Hilary felt everyone agreed with her. She’s
grown up with, been schooled with, gone to cocktail parties with people who agree with her. The lesson inculcated at every opportunity: The chick who works is cool. What’s uncool: The chick with kids who stays home to take care of them.
Come on, America
, Hilary was saying,
you’re with me on this one! Being a mom—and nothing else—is really nothing at all
.

I bet a stay-at-home mom would know how to clean up this mess better than Rosen. But don’t be angry at Rosen, for it’s always refreshing when a progressive reveals itself to the world by saying something they all really believe to be true. It’s like watching a rare animal outside its comfy habitat acting like a rare animal. You might not see it again, acting this way in public. For what you heard is what the cool people say in the parties that neither you nor I attend. This is how the cool really feel: that Ann Romney is an example of the quaint, inferior, and irrelevant prefeminist gal. She’s a joke. A dinosaur in Anne Klein pantsuits. An arcane caricature, like the secretary in
Beetle Bailey
. She’s not really a real woman by modern standards. No, she’s just a nonentity whose lifestyle choices clearly were not her own. She couldn’t seriously
want
to raise a beautiful family, while married to a loving husband, and look forward to the two of them growing old together. Why do that, when you can be a talking head and mock it all on CNN? You’ll get car service to and from work!

From the cool perspective, a full-time, stay-at-home mom (what we used to call, simply, “mom”) is completely blind to her own hopelessness, a victim of false consciousness and every other fifty-dollar word you learned in grad school from wispy weirdos in granny glasses. This is why the media embraced Sandra Fluke (pronounced “Flook,” no matter what she says) over Ann Romney. Fearlessly fighting for free crap is cool, but raising kids? Uncool.

And the end result from this perspective: a message to girls that desiring a full life is impossible, unless you divorce yourself from things that might in fact make you happy. The stay-at-home mom—perhaps the most influential, powerful force for our nation’s future—is suddenly not a guardian of our most important resource. She’s a fascist prison guard, wielding a bloody wooden spoon (which would make a good movie, actually).

This all came about because Ann Romney had talked to her husband about the state of the economy, and he actually listened to her. And that’s what Rosen objected to—how can you listen to a mom about the economy? I guess she doesn’t realize it’s the moms who do most of the purchasing in a home and keep track of the bills. But something tells me Hilary has someone do that for her, since she considers herself an “expert” at more important things. Basically Rosen just said, “Ann should just shut up and cook. Get a graduate degree and a fully loaded Prius, and we’ll talk.”