No-Compete Friday

Gavin M. meets Goldberg Admiration Society treasurer Katie at Kaubki Village:

"But I waited…waited until I knew I would be in Manhattan for the day…a day when I could purchase it at the book store at Grand Central (making sure to ask the clerk where it was even though it was on a table in the center of the store…just because I knew it would drive the guy nuts) and could then carry it throughout my day of meetings."

Let’s look at this woman’s big day on the town. She created a multi-stage pageant out of buying a copy of Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism — a book devised as though on the spot at a cocktail party, as an insouciant one-liner from a half-drunk Jonah to some cornball editor he was trying to impress (Adam Bellow, let’s imagine), which was then delivered only after years of flop sweat, excruciating mental gymnastics, and probably genuine debilitating mental depression, because as Jonah knew at the time (and as he probably knows still during certain late nights and lonely self-encounters), while its concept is guaran-freaking-teed to make liberals hop-hop-hoppingly mad, it cannot stand as a serious book because it is premised on an absurdity. So here she’s like, “Tee-hee, my plan begins by loudly asking for this book at Grand Central Station, just in case there’s a liberal nearby to whom I’d be sticking it.” It’s like those Mexican guys in Los Angeles with the bouncy cars: On the surface it just looks silly, but then you consider the industry and determination on display — step by step from concept to technical execution — in installing custom hydraulic systems in order to bounce up and down in their car all pocketa-pocketa while scowling at you at a random stoplight, and it’s genuinely sort of terrifying. What sort of people would do this, and by God, what else are they capable of?

WE would just like to add, as a Public Service, that You can observe a lot just by watching. Supposing you would avoid crapping your pants except under the most ungovernable of circumstances, you might also take this to suggest something about your driving habits or political pronouncements, absent any evidence to the contrary. I'm always struck that people (including the author, apparently) consider Being There an indictment of Television mindlessness (which is like indicting somebody who was hanged a half-century earlier, innit?) when it's the simple knowledge gained from gardening that propels Chance into prominence. Maybe that's because I'm a feeble-minded gardener myself, but anyway: the fact that "Reality" does not instantly punish every instance of complete and utter bullshit that comes down the pike owes everything to the quantity of bullshit out there, not its quality. Every time a traffic light saves us from being crushed to death by a speeding dump truck we see the utter refutation of modern Republican Libertoonianism. Certainly, we might make a lot of money producing something like Liberal Fascism, and we might even do so under a nom de plume, thus keeping our shame a secret. But even if we managed to do so, every one of us can see, just walking down the street, that dying in unspeakable poverty is preferable to living as Jonah Goldberg.

Most of us, even some Republicans whose favored form of religious observance does not involve water moccasins and flaming jerrycans of white gas, do our own shopping. We are therefore capable of observing the attitude of most service personnel to the asshole Americanus in a natural setting, since if you're third in line or lower there's bound to be at least one in front of you, and if you're standing patiently in some formless line, at the Deli, say, and they're all behind you, at least one is sure to step in front when it's your turn. We could simply extrapolate from here; the average cashier or counterman must encounter fifty complete assholes and double that in brain-damaged twits in the average shift, and that's assuming the place doesn't serve alcohol. This means it's about as likely they bother him as it is that stepping in cowshit irritates a dairy farmer.

But let's go ahead and continue our field observations. How do such folk, in the main, respond? They don't. They don't give a fuck about you; if they did we're hear about one or two going postal every single day.

And I don't know, but I would suspect that people working in a bookstore, which, by its very nature, suggests literacy on the part of both employee and patron, pretty much have you pegged if you find it necessary to march up first thing and ask them where such-and-such could be found, whether it's Liberal Fascism, A Thomas Kincade Chanukah, or To the Lighthouse. There are enormous fucking signs delineating each section, lady. You've just announced you're too lazy or stupid to look for them, or else you're too self-important not to have The Help do it for you. It's hardly surprising, under the circumstances, that you're looking for Goldberg's shit sandwich. Aisle Six, on the (snigger) Left. Can I help the next asshole in line?

Yes, we said something about Public Service, and it's not to suggest to these people that they curb the junior-high slumber party antics before they deal with anybody who handles their food. Frankly, we hope they don't. It's that it's well past time to put this tired crap to bed and find a new routine. We'd like to suggest entering liberal bastions like bookstores, libraries, and daycare centers and brandishing a weapon at the employees, just to show your Second amendment absolutism.