This article appears in the September 2007 issue of
The American Spectator. To subscribe to our monthly print
edition, click here.
“EXCUSE ME, CAN I TAKE YOUR PICTURE?” The man asking this question
is tattooed and lizard-like, dressed completely in black, with
horribly manicured facial hair. You can guess he works for a free
paper, one he probably designs in a Port Authority restroom. He’s
wearing a leather vest, under which his hairy belly has poked
through.
Damn. For a minute there, I thought I had been recognized. I am,
after all, the host of a television show that airs nightly. But
alas, this cretin was not asking me, but talking to my
co-worker/pal Josh. “I’m doing a photo story on sun glasses,” the
freak adds, “and I really like yours.” My guess is this is just a
ploy to get Josh’s phone number. After all, we’re at an event
sponsored by the Village Voice.
We are standing in front of the Cyclone, an aging, mildly
dangerous rollercoaster — which gives you an idea of where I might
be. My wife and I, along with Josh, are at the Village
Voice Siren Festival, a free all-day music event smack dab in
the middle of the decaying emblem of family fun, Coney Island. The
concert, featuring the New York Dolls — an aging punk outfit
fronted by David Johanson, who is looking more and more like a
decrepit Glenda Jackson — and MIA, a Sri Lankan hip hop artist,
among others, has drawn a crowd of aging and semi-aging hipsters,
all dressed or partially dressed in vintage surplus, leather, and
twine. The garish tattoos arrive in the thousands, revealing as
always that sheepish conformity is alive and well among
Voice readers. My guess is no one here watches my show, or
the Fox News Channel (where it airs) — but if they did, they
wouldn’t admit it. That would be more rebellious than, say, a woman
with orange hair, cradling a dog with blue hair.
And there she is, standing in front of me, and the wretched dog
is baking in the hot sun on a humid Saturday afternoon. The woman’s
mascara is running — and she now appears to be a weeping Goth
about to make an animal sacrifice. The California band We Are
Scientists is just finishing its last song above a sea of nodding
heads, and I realize I am surrounded by all the people in the world
I hate.
If you can imagine making the sordid cheesiness of Coney Island
worse, simply fill it with crusty hipsters in board shorts, wallet
chains, and tats. As the roadies break down the set, we make our
way onto Surf Avenue to find booze. I look around and see that the
only people enjoying themselves are the families, oblivious to the
concert, lining up to get on the Cyclone. Me, I’m lining up for a
Heineken, which, unlike the Cyclone, seems safe. “Six bucks,” says
the rough-looking gent behind the counter, busy poking at cobs of
corn in a boiler. I pay him the cash for the beer. Then Josh
approaches and orders the same thing. “Three bucks.”
Maybe I look like an out-of-towner. It must be my vacation
hat.
If it’s possible to actually create a frozen drink that arrives
warm, we’ve found it — a strawberry daiquiri I’ve just bought my
wife for ten bucks. It came in a long plastic glass shaped like a
giant ear wash. It doesn’t taste good, but it’s got to be loads
better than what the man in front of me just ingested. A chunky
punk in black garb, he’s cradling his face, which, to the casual
observer, seems to be pulsating. Perhaps he’s a victim of an
excruciatingly bad mushroom trip. Or, maybe, he had a hot dog. I’ve
had two, and I don’t feel so hot.
The concert is open to all ages, but for the most part I see
people in their 30s, trying to act like people in their 20s who
think it’s the '60s. This is the Village Voice personified
— pointing fingers at the man, signifying nothing. All of these
cretins like to pretend they’re unique, in their anti-Bush
T-shirts, but Josh and I know better. We both work at Fox News
Channel. We’re the rebels here. The rest of these folks are
impostors.
Someone famous once gave some very important career advice,
which went something like, “Find something you do well, and do it
the rest of your life.” Or, wait, maybe it was, “Find something you
like doing, and do that for the rest of your life.” No, no, no…
maybe it was, “Find something that people need, and make them pay
for it.” I wish I could remember, but maybe it’s a combination:
“Find something you do well and get paid until you don’t want to do
it anymore.” I like that one — because it probably likes me. The
thing I do well, and the thing I like doing, is identifying
cretins. I am a “cretin identifier,” an occupation that I am pretty
certain anyone who writes for or reads The American
Spectator also dabbles in, however unintentionally.
HERE IS HOW A CRETIN IDENTIFIER does his job: He does or says
something that causes outcry, anger, and threats from people who
are almost always on the wrong side of everything. I learned how to
do this best on the Huffington Post, the left-wing blog run by
Arianna, the modern matriarch of moonbattery. By simply writing
something that pointed out the folly of progressivism, or, more
specifically, the inherent hypocrisy of an environmentalist flying
on a private jet to give a speech about hybrid cars, the comments
would range from personal threats to lurid comments about my
family. I have never met these people face to face — but I know
what they look like. They’re all here at Coney Island, trying to
appear edgy but looking desperately dull.
That’s why you need to identify them. Because, as I can see here
today, they all hide behind a uniform. The joy found in identifying
cretins: exposing those who use a protective stereotype to cloak
their own cruelty. The more downtown hip you look, the more of a
jerk you are. A progressive is just a mugger who can’t afford a
weapon.
I always say that there’s no one more dangerous or poisonous to
a family than if one of the kin turns out to be progressive, or a
Village Voice reader. He will tell you, over the course of
many hours, how important it is to have proper irrigation in Third
World countries, and he will tell you how he is going to make that
happen — probably by running a workshop at the Learning Annex. But
then, of course, back home — he’s late on his rent, he doesn’t buy
butter, and he eats all of his roommates’ food. He continues to
borrow money from friends (and never repays), while spending it on
pot — and hasn’t cleaned the bathroom in years. But if you ask
him, he’ll describe himself as “selfless.” He’ll say he only thinks
of others, i.e., those he’s never met. The other “others” — those
who actually have to deal with him — want to dismember him with a
dull butter knife.
That’s the definition of modern progressiveness: thinking
globally, but screwing over everyone else locally. This is why, in
any family where there is a problem child (or these days, problem
adult) — the kind that squanders parental love and opportunity in
a quest for self-aggrandizement — he or she is almost always an
activist. And he or she almost always stinks. After many years,
however, their own self-belief wanes, and they kill themselves. See
Abbie Hoffman.
Or worse, don’t see him. The ones that don’t kill themselves are
more corrosive, for they actually fulfill their promise to make an
impact. And it never helps. How has Bob Geldof’s Live Aid assisted
Africa? Well, aside from lining the pockets of thugs, fanatics, and
dictators, I don’t have a clue. Through their charitable efforts,
Geldof and Bono both have bought some pretty fancy cars for some
really awful people.
Right-wingers and right-leaning libertarians would never think
of screwing over their families and friends when it comes to
financial or chore obligations. In fact, they pride themselves on
being completely, 100 percent dependable. They pay for their
drinks, and they’ll take care of your plants when you’re away. And
they won’t record over your only copy of America’s Best Sports
Bloopers. That’s because they’re nice.
And that’s the most comical irony of modern-day liberals: They
are not nice. And they can’t be. A progressive must be tolerant of
everyone and everything, and that turns them into witless monsters.
Or cretins. And so I go out of my way to meet them, here at a
Village Voice event on Coney Island. In one afternoon, as
a cretin-identifier, I’ve nailed about seven or eight thousand.
That’s like a month’s work done in one evening.
I should probably take a break and buy my wife dinner. And not a
hot dog. Something classier. Chicken wings. That’ll work.
