The Fine Art of Not Belonging
One of the perks of working as a financial journalist is that you sometimes get to go to parties in nice places where food and drink are free. It doesn’t make up for working for years without a raise and being in constant fear of being laid off, but it’s nice nonetheless.
Last evening was one such party, a charity event put on by people in finance.
Ostensibly my coworker and I were there to meet people that would help us do our job. Schmoozing with financial people is part of my job, but it’s a part of the job that I am bad at.
I dressed well enough and was pleasant and polite and still had no hopes of blending in. Members of the financial class are their own race, though they are made of different races. They can look through you as if you are not there and walk with a confidence that bristles with a condescending hostility and feels perpetually offensive and false. I wore a nice suit but maybe there was something in the way I said thank you to the caterers, or the fact I thanked them at all, that gave me away as decidedly not one of the financial class.
There’s nothing wrong with finance, but the people who work in the higher echelons of finance today are not cut from the same material as the people who invent things or pioneered and forged new industries. They are custodians of other people’s money and often speak in a gloating jargon that moves lots of money but creates little of value. I’m sure many of them are decent people and good at their job, but they do not possess the fire of the technology entrepreneurs or venture capitalists I met during previous jobs.
After thirteen years of working in financial journalism, I have actually gotten worse at the art of fitting in at these types of gatherings. My motivation for the easy smile and the glad-handed talk has waned. But I am glad not to fit in among this alien class. Somehow I feel that in the important calculus of life I’ll have more to show for it at the unspoken reckoning at the verge of the great beyond.
I ate as many miniature lobster rolls as I could without making a spectacle of myself and made my discreet exit after putting in a respectable amount of time at the event. I briefly enjoyed the sights of the city on the first really warm evening of the spring before making my descent to the subway for home.
Read Poetry, It Is Good For You
So there is a new poem on another blog you should read. I wrote the poem, but don’t let that discourage you. Read the new poem and then peruse the rest of the Impolite Literature blog.
The goal of the blog is to kick me in the ass to write more poetry and fiction, it’s also to declare a kind of populist war against the powers that be in the literary world. The literary world is in large part comprised of snooty academics that are too busy scratching each other’s backs to promote the cause of literature or even acknowledge much of the good writing that’s out there. A handful of professors judge poetry contests and award decisive publishing prizes to students, lovers, or other effete snobs they owe favors to. Impolite Literature says fuck all of that.
Enjoy the literature.
Dew the Manufactured Controversy
The latest manufactured racial controversy involves a talking goat that drinks soda. Mountain Dew has pulled a commercial from the Internet that was supposedly “racist” because it featured black men in a criminal lineup along with a talking goat that loves Mountain Dew.
The brief clips that I’ve been able to watch of this “racist” commercial actually look funny. A crazy goat guzzles Mountain Dew and beats up a waitress. The waitress, cut, bruised, on crutches and wearing a neck brace, is viewing a lineup at a police station that features the brown goat and four black men. Even though her assailant is obvious in the lineup, she is too traumatized by the Dew-crazed goat to identify her attacker.
The men in the lineup are all members of the rap group Odd Future, and the video was directed by Odd Future member Tyler the Creator. Tyler the Creator is not that good a rapper—and he’s disrespected Yonkers to boot (watch this parody of his work by the much-better rapper Hopsin)—but he and other members of the group have a comedy show called Loiter Squad that has actually had some funny moments.
What seems to be lost on the legion of intelligentsia who’ve condemned the commercial as racist is that IT FEATURES A TALKING GOAT. Do we really need to explain any further than that? I’m sorry, but once you realize that the commercial centers around a goat that drinks soda and goes crazy, shouldn’t that be a clue?
If the fact that it is a Mountain Dew commercial didn’t tip you off not to take it seriously, the goat should have. Once you introduce livestock into the mix, you’re done trying to say anything serious. (I’m aware of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the like, but it’s safe to say that Orwell would be above writing soda commercials if he were still with us).
The fact that the black rappers are there in the lineup doesn’t make it racist. The goat is brown in appearance like the rappers, but he is a goat and they are human beings, and the absurdity of the lineup is humorous. Maybe the black director was criticizing our country’s criminal justice system. Perhaps he was presenting a piece of racial realism and calling the corporate world’s bluff on it. But I’m willing to bet he was just trying to make a ridiculous commercial.
And maybe it’s not that funny; maybe it’s pretty dumb like just about every commercial on television. I have yet to sit through a Mountain Dew commercial that I found erudite, awe-inspiring or even tasteful. That’s OK though, Mountain Dew drinkers aren’t known for their good taste.
And someone please tell me that animal rights activists have complained that a goat was made to drink a large sugary beverage.
The entire “controversy” is most likely a work like New Coke: something that wasn’t meant to even be a real commercial but put out there just to generate press. It worked: I just spent 25 minutes trying to watch an admittedly asinine Mountain Dew commercial.
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