I drove by the old house on Linden with the dance studio
attached, and evenings it was lit up with television blue from the front room.
Television-screen blue lit up the front room window blinds and sat on the front
porch drinking Miller High Life beer out of beer bottles. Through the blinds,
the blue, I saw angry and exasperated on the television. Distrust anger on the
television spouting its exasperation in blue through the blinds and out onto
North Linden, where I drove without my windshield wipers ticking. I saw the
exasperation clear and maybe attributed it to the shade of the blue, how the
blue was artificial and not the color of water or the sky or other blue things
outside the front room. But the artificial television blue was familiar in the
way seeing something every weekday evening for forever can make a thing
familiar to someone. No other lights are ever on in the house except the front
room television light. No other lights are ever on in the upstairs laundry room
or in the attached dance studio. If the house was a face instead of a house, it
would be a lifeless face, angry and exasperated.
…
I don’t hate
Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly simply because he’s a close-minded, arrogant
asshole. I hate him, or rather, the Hater
character he plays on bluescreen TV, because he represents a dialogic paradox
that makes me anxious when I think about it (or worse, have to plan for it. Or
worst, have to react to it):
To engage or not to engage in critical (or friendly!) discourse
with a Hater who will (likely) think you are stupid and wrong and untalented
and worthless no matter what you say or do (unless, of course, you agree with
him/her)?
O’Reilly represents, for me, the
former elementary, junior high, or high school teacher who thought I was a
loser when I was in his/her class and who tries to maintain my loser status in
his/her mind, despite my limited academic and/or professional successes, by
making me feel like a small town loser with nothing going for him (Note: in
reality, you could substitute O’Reilly out of the equation and insert any hard-headed
Hater you might know or interact with in your real or imagined life. I invite
you to make this Hater narrative your own.) Here’s how the situation goes down
in my anxious head (and in like two or three different real life situations of
the past few years):
I am out and about in my hometown
(where I attended all past and present academic institutions and where I currently
live.) A former teacher (or classmate) spots me, weirdsmiles, and walks over.
The conversation starts something like this:
Former Teacher: Hey, Evan. Still in town I see?
Me: Yes, I am. Just going to
school.
FM: Ahh, still in school? You always did go about things in your own way.
And at this point we have reached the paradoxical moment
typified by many an O’Reilly “interview” (is it still considered an interview
if the interviewer isn’t genuinely interested in hearing anything the
interviewee has to say?) Obviously, the Hater is doing his or her best to hate
(e.g., trying to make me feel like a weenie for still living in my hometown,
trying to make me feel like a weenie for traveling a less-traditional academic
path.) The Hater (and O’Reilly is a professional, just check out the “The Hater
Elite” list in the most recent issue of Vibe)
will always try to discount the hatee’s identity / beliefs / ideas/work by claiming
the hatee is a total weenie for this or that reason. As I see it, in the
discourse with the former teacher outlined above, I have two ways to proceed:
1. Engage
the Hater – Calmly and rationally explain who I am, what I believe in, and
why who I am and what I believe in are valid and worthy of respect. I might
explain how personal and economic factors (rather than lack of ambition or
wanderlust) played large roles in my identical past and current geographic
location. I might explain my current academic status in terms of my drive for
post-graduate success (not delayed or non-linear undergraduate enrollment.) I
might point out the value of advanced education, postmodern literature,
creative writing, etc., in the expansion of a thriving cultural and political
democracy. I might use facts, figures, and all manners of pie chart (the
rhetorical possibilities are endless.) In the end, the Hater might still hate,
but at least I know I stood up for myself.
Or,
2. Do
Not Engage the Hater – Turn my back on the Hater (perhaps call him or her a
dirty name) and more or less walk away. In the end, the Hater isn’t worth the
time or energy of a guaranteed argument (especially one he or she probably
won’t listen to/engage in/value anyway.)
As a trained thinker and language user, I am immediately drawn
to Option 1. I suppose this is because, deep down (in my idealistic heart of
hearts), I desperately want to believe that, when presented with a sound
argument buttressed by reasonable data and presented coherently and
persuasively, even the most stubborn Hater will at least consider a hatee’s
point of view. But then I witness discourses like this:
and wonder if it’s even worth it to engage a chronic Hater
in discussion when he/she is so completely intent on hating that things like hatee
identity (“you consider yourself a learned man don’t you, Professor?”),
academic/professional credibility (“your Princeton, or wherever it is, students”), and referenced data (hear: the
silence of dismissive indifference followed by finger-pointing gab) are totally
disregarded in favor of exasperated weeniefying (i.e., telling two noted African
American public intellectuals to “knock it off with the Black business.”)
Maybe it’s
easier, and less psychically draining/traumatizing, to choose Option 2:
and tell all Haters to “suck my dick” because, after all,
they’re probably “motherfucking pricks.”
Unfortunately,
when it comes right down to it, both Hater-dealing options pose potential
problems of their own. Both options actually kind of suck, actually, for to engage a
Hater means to validate a Hater-argument with a response (thus, giving the
Hater a fight [which is probably all the Hater really wanted in the first
place]), and to not engage a Hater means to risk coming off as just as
closed-minded, arrogant, and assholish as the Hater him/herself. This nasty
paradox haunts me in almost all potential Hater confrontations and is, I
suspect, the concern of many academic pacifists who still want to stand up for
themselves and the things they believe in.
In the end, I guess, while there
may never be any “right” or “easy” way to deal with the persistent hating of
Haters (“Haters are,” as the old adage goes “going to hate”), I take solace in
the fact that Haters rarely hate on people who aren’t shaking things up, doing their things, and getting theirs. Maybe
the simple presence of Haters means that just enough people are doing big stuff
in the world. Maybe the best way to deal with Haters is to keep doing the
things they hate.
No comments:
Post a Comment