Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You (7 page)
Read Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You Online
Authors: Greg Gutfeld
Tags: #Humor, #Topic, #Political, #Biography & Autobiography, #Political Science, #Essays
And it puts those who disagree with their antics at a disadvantage. How can you be against helping the poor? Or separating
glass bottles from paper trash? How can you not want to save the whales, or adopt a polar bear, or marry a Baldwin?
You must be a monster if you don’t agree with those causes. And while some of these activities might have some good effects, the persons engaging in such “selfless work” are really doing it for themselves. It’s all about feeding an ego, not feeding a person. As I write this, Ben Affleck is going to live on $1.50 a day to raise awareness of the plight of the starving in Africa. Wouldn’t it be better if he raised awareness as to why so much money raised for Africa rarely makes it to its poor, suffering people? Of course, it would—but that’s not a stunt. That requires real homework, real research, and real knowledge about the nature of Third World corruption and its consequences. And Affleck has enough trouble trying to convince people he’s not a hologram.
Social consciousness has become a gimmick to excuse reprehensible behavior. In fact, put “social” before any word, and it becomes “important” and “compassionate.” At its worst, social consciousness masks evil—it’s flimflam for the foul, a condemnation condom. Social consciousness won Al Sharpton invites to the White House, despite the cad’s ruining countless lives since his garish orgy of racial exploitation that began with the Tawana Brawley case in 1987.
How do you know that social consciousness is thoroughly worthless? When it’s so easy that everyone else is doing it. When it’s integrated into sappy TV sitcoms, and when corporations desperate for approval from people who hate them flaunt it on their websites or on Twitter. When superficial and dumb-as-dirt celebs get involved. Social consciousness becomes the dumping ground for reflexive, attention-seeking acts of meaningless symbolism—a
phony exercise meant to shroud the shallowness of those employing it. It’s a sham’s best friend. It makes you miss the cool of old: the aimless biker with a nonfilter cig hanging from his lips. Yeah, he smelled bad. But at least he won’t block your path to work to get you to sign a petition to save the paramecium. And, for the record, paramecia are assholes.
On the ladder of cool, however, social consciousness maintains the top spot. At the bottom, hanging on to the lowest rung of uncool, resides its opposite: the boring capitalist. Meaning, the person who is greedy and always out for himself. The person making a buck is inferior to the person who gives a fuck. Never mind that the greedy dude is usually making a buck to support a family, and often a community. And, oh yeah, a country.
Of course, it’s the boring capitalist who often bankrolls the people who hate him. If it weren’t for the person bringing in the money, nothing else would work. For a community to grow to a size that sustains those who don’t contribute to the growth of said community (whom I call leeches but society has chosen to call grad students), you need an immensely powerful creature to build a structure that allows those loafers to exist. But even a whale can only support so many parasites.
Without a “capitalist consciousness,” there is no “social consciousness.” A poor society cannot help the poor. This is why no one should listen to Al Sharpton. If it weren’t for people Al Sharpton hates, there would be no Sharptons. This is troubling to me. Why is the average businessman boring but the radical type deemed cool? I came up with some possibilities:
Businessmen are boring on purpose
. The suit and tie and drab hair are meant to hide the inherent riskiness of capitalism. That’s the irony: The real daredevils are those who play
with their own money. Those who start businesses, who risk it all, and often who lose it all, over and over. Someone has to provide the funds for the safety nets the cool demand—and the providers are the uncool capitalists who took risks with their capital and are now taxed to the hilt. The vast majority of people supporting our national dependency are businessmen—large and small, male and female—who put their asses on the line every damn day. They are the truly cool, even if they look like dorks drinking Scotch and doing karaoke poorly in a Midtown bar (it’s always to Taylor Dayne). The real risk-takers build products and then brands, while those railing against them are as safe as soy milk.
It’s easier to understand caring than it is to understand business
. Ask any television news producer what makes more immediate, arresting television: a young, earnest protester railing against corporations, or a corporate employee defending his company? Perhaps if the producer took a course in “how money works,” he might see the merits in the latter. But he didn’t get into journalism to do math. He got into journalism to tell a story. (And generally, to speak truth to power, which really translates as “The speaker is a dick.”) In that story, it’s the emotional subject that trumps the uncool reality of life. Plus, you might score with the protester, who wants to get famous and get access to your minibar. The participants satisfy each other’s needs while obliterating any sense of truth.
Business is anti-charismatic
. Banks are meant to be dull. There should be no flash accompanying your cash. Which is why we don’t want Mickey Rourke to be our financial adviser; he’d put all our money in Eastern European brothels and expensive tequila that plays Pac-Man with your liver. We just want to drink with him. So attributes like “charm” and
“sexiness” and “romance” never evolved in the business world. Meanwhile, the young men who lack the cash to get girls into bed have instead built an arsenal of anti-authoritarian lies to get laid. (I did this for a while myself, but it didn’t work. I just can’t grow dreadlocks.) How else could a piece of trash like Bill Ayers get laid? As a terrorist, this loser couldn’t even do that right.
Guilt for being successful
. Once you’re successful, there are others who are envious of your achievements, who blame you for their lack of accomplishment. (I’ve been on both sides of this, often on the same night.) Sadly, it works. Most of us are decent people, and we want to be liked and/or left alone. So when the cool anticapitalists—feeling no guilt because they’ve apparently never made a profit anywhere—choose to focus their “for the greater good” mentality on the benign capitalist, the benign capitalist capitulates. When these people claim that others “deserve” your income, your savings, your material goods, rather than fight the arguments, corporations and their captains give in; it’s just better to throw money at angry fools than to argue with them. You can’t win when you’re a suit, and they are hirsute. Seriously—since when did lumberjack beards reflect actual achievement … on Brooklyn waiters?
Young people don’t know where money comes from
. To them, it comes from Dad’s bank account. Press them further, and you might as well ask them how to build a Hadron Collider. Sadly, no one bothers to educate the cool kids about money. Have you ever read an article about a penniless rocker who calls his mom to borrow cash so he can put money in his van’s gas tank? No, you just read about his “dark soul.” For some reason, the “cool” exist without the machinations of money; stuff just appears when they need it, like Easter eggs
in April or Democratic voters in Ohio. It’s far easier for them to understand “divestment on campus” than “investment in stocks.” This is why students are often the best targets for the aggressive beggar. I see it in Manhattan every day. A seasoned panhandler need only play cool, and by proxy can make the backpacked undergrad feel cool too, and that quickly separates the kid from his dad’s dollars. The panhandler walks away with money for dope, and the young dope walks away feeling good about himself, without ever wondering how that money made it into his pocket in the first place. That’s the essence of modern capitalism for the cool: “I give you something, yet I have no idea where that something came from.” It’s an economy based on the tooth fairy.
It’s this misguided view of charity that has replaced real charity. As our government pretends to offer handouts, it’s really just spreading the wealth around, without wondering where that wealth has come from. In the end, redistribution kills ambition, saps the energy that fuels the American dream, and makes all of us poorer each passing day. Our consciousness may be raised, but our options for wealth and success dwindle. (Which is why I really need you to buy two copies of this book. My hormone treatments aren’t covered by Obamacare.)
Let me ask you this: If you were to designate who was cooler, who would it be? Phil Lynott or Mitt Romney? It’s pretty easy. Lynott—hands down.
Lynott was the lead singer who fronted the great Irish band Thin Lizzy, known for chord-crunching nuggets like “The Boys Are Back in Town” and “Jailbreak.” If you don’t have their great live album, you’re probably an awful person. Anyway, Lynott died of a drug overdose in January 1986. He was a great-looking, talented, black Irish—but also a junkie. A dead junkie, now.
Back in September 2012, a couple of months before the last presidential election, both Lynott’s widow and mom raised objections to Romney’s use of “The Boys Are Back in Town” during his campaign. They were opposed because Mitt opposed gay marriage, and they assumed Philip would have been pissed about it, if he hadn’t overdosed twenty-five years prior.