Rick's March Tirade
Humbuggery
Most of us are born with a gift for seeing through sham and
chicanery. An untutored child is quick to spy a fraud -- and
wonderfully eager to kick him in the shin.
When I was a little dark-haired boy of four or so, my mother took
me to see the Easter Bunny. The illustrious rabbit was putting in a
personal appearance at P.J. Young's, then the finest department
store in my hometown of New Brunswick, New Jersey. I still remember
the creaking of the ancient wooden floorboards as we mounted the
steps to the mezzanine level and reverently entered the precinct of
the Holy Hare.
I was about to have a close encounter with the source of all
jelly beans...the bringer of foil-covered chocolate eggs and
marshmallow chicks in baskets filled with crinkly cellophane grass.
I swelled with youthful anticipation at the prospect of meeting such
a world-class celebrity.
What a hoax! Easily six feet tall (not counting the ears) and
clad in a ridiculous pink bunny suit, this ersatz lagomorph was no
more of a rabbit than I was. When my turn came to greet the
impostor, I stepped on his foot. I can't tell you if this was a
deliberate act; I like to think it was, but the passage of decades
has blurred the details. I do remember that the pseudo-rabbit let
out a very human "OWWW!," and that I felt a perverse
satisfaction at exposing him as a naked sham. Such is the savage
honesty of a four-year-old.
Fast-forward about sixteen years. The same dark-haired boy is
sitting in a college lecture hall listening to his art history
professor rhapsodize on some willfully obscure Cubist canvas.
"Three-dimensional space has been reduced to a flat
plane," the good doctor droned. "Note the primacy of line
over depth... the marvelous ambiguity." The rebellious
four-year-old was rising in my craw. I wanted -- I NEEDED -- to yell
out, "Why is that GOOD, you fool? It took thousands of years
for artists to discover perspective; perspective is a commendable
thing. And you're PRAISING this guy for throwing it out the window?
And furthermore, what's so marvelous about ambiguity?"
I felt an irrepressible urge to step on a foot. But I repressed
it. Having evolved into a respectable (and respectful) gentleman, I
bit my tongue and kept my peace.
It takes years of systematic socialization to purge us of our
native acumen, years of indoctrination to make us timid in the
presence of charlatanry. I wonder how many of my classmates didn't
even think to quibble with the professor's analysis; they just
copied it into their notebooks and memorized it, if for no other
reason than to score points on the final exam.
Today most of us are still copying down the spurious notions fed
to us -- day after day, year after year -- by the various professors
of public opinion. We enter those opinions into our mental notebooks
and memorize them for as if our grades depended on it.
By now, most of us have accepted without question that thin is
better than plump, young better than old, extroverted better than
introverted, energetic better than reflective, north better than
south, blond better than brunette. We read the books everyone else
is reading, see the movies everyone else is seeing. We've been sold
on the concept of cool to the extent that most of us are terrified
to be our lovable dorky selves. We've been snookered by the cult of
celebrity, so we confer automatic prestige on anyone whose face
regularly appears on a screen.
How we used to roar our approval when David Letterman would tweak
the unsuspecting proboscis of some poor corn-fed out-of-towner! (So
inventive, so hip, so outrageous!) How we still kowtow to
self-promoting nutritional experts with their all-carbohydrate (or
no-carbohydrate) diet plans! How we live in awe of noble Olympians
who risk doom on slippery ski slopes for a chance to promote
breakfast cereal or lip balm! How we still respond with Pavlovian
salivation to any product that shouts from its package, "AS
SEEN ON TV!"
The aggressiveness of the fraudulent promoters and
opinion-mongers, combined with our own willingness to submit,
amounts almost to a physical violation of our beings. Call it
humbuggery, if you will.
Adolescents are being humbuggered when they accept tattoos,
pierced body parts and an in-your-face attitude as prerequisites to
self-esteem. Employees are being humbuggered when they're led to
believe that teamwork and 12-hour days will land them in the
executive boardroom. (The sad truth is that they'd do better copying
the hairstyle, shoes, mannerisms and sports preferences of their
vice president.) And we've all been humbuggered when we find
ourselves admiring diehard yuppies who carry cell phones and
electronic organizers on their trips to Aruba or the local
supermarket. ("Gee, I wish I were that important!")
Submitting to received opinions has always been a depressingly
viable lifestyle. We reject our own instincts for the superior
wisdom of our leaders. For the masses of people whose minds are
bland, passive and pliable, this is no inordinate sacrifice. In
fact, they're probably doing themselves a favor by allowing
themselves to be humbuggered; they make more headway in the world
than the cynical holdouts who stick to their beliefs and suffer for
them.
But the trouble with received opinions, as with all fashions, is
that they tend to change unexpectedly. When one faction is deposed
and another takes its place, the rules change, too.
The lusty Elizabethans gamboled to lyrical consort music, piquant
poetry and extravagantly staged pageantry. They celebrated free love
and reveled in the pleasures of the theatre. A generation later, the
survivors had to don the dour black of the Puritans if they wanted
to continue surviving.
Had you been living in France in 1788, you'd have emulated the
powdered aristocrats in all their verbal and sartorial finery; five
years later you'd have emulated them at the price of your head.
Only half a century ago, the Anglo-Saxon socialite was still the
beau ideal of the American republic; every Hollywood starlet and
aspiring adman copied the crisp delivery, natty clothes and
insouciant tippling of these favored few. Today "class" is
a dirty word in American popular culture.
In the late 1960s it was almost de rigueur to espouse Marxist
dogma on U.S. college campuses; the fabled Vietnam war protests were
a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the federal government and
bring about its downfall. But the masses of bright collegians fell
prey to the strident rhetoric, and they were challenged only by a
lumpy contingent of doltish rednecks. Today everyone chuckles at the
rabid excesses of the '60s. (Of course, we still chuckle at
rednecks, too.)
Moral of the story: If you live by received opinions, be prepared
to spend excessively on new intellectual wardrobes. Be prepared to
shift your beliefs at a moment's notice. Be prepared to renounce
your right to a free mind.
Better to hold on to your cynic's rags and wear them proudly; you
might not advance far in the world, but nobody can accuse you of
being humbuggered.
What can we do to fight humbuggery? When we're fed palpable
nonsense by the reigning purveyors of opinion and taste, more of us
have to shout, "Why is that GOOD?" Too many of us smart
ones keep our silence, just as I had done in art history class all
those years ago. Just as the non-Marxist students had done during
the Vietnam war protests. We were too embarrassed to side with the
rednecks.
If we're going to fight humbuggery with any success, we have to
become four-year-olds again. We have to trust our instincts and
express them without reservation.
Wherever you go, be on the lookout for that ridiculous man in the
rabbit suit. Let him know YOU know he's a fake. And if you get a
chance, step on his foot.
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
