When I got a rejection slip from a trendy, au courant magazine the other day, I immediately went off to see my friend Anne Masarweh, whom I often consult on matters of coolness, hipness and other vagaries of fashion.
Anne knows these things. After all, she runs a hip, cool clothing store on San Francisco's Grant Avenue called wearEver. Clever name. Whatever. As you walk in the door, you find a conspicuous display of the latest issue of Details magazine, that arbiter of what's cool, the oracle of 20-something style.
"You're just not weird enough," Anne said as she handed the thank-you-but-no-thanks letter back to me.
Ms. Masarweh is a little unusual in the sense that she's always kind, and certainly diplomatic.
But I knew the truth. She didn't have to spell it out for me. I just don't have the quality that is necessary to be part of contemporary culture. It's called "attitude."
Attitude is the key these days. I know I'm getting old because I can remember when you needed an adjective before the word to convey its meaning, that is, "good attitude" and "bad attitude." Plenty of times, in my shoddy youth, I was chided by one authority or another with, "You have a bad attitude, Bruce."
This assessment was always accompanied by a warning, such as, "You're going to walk a straight line from now on" or "Better turn over a new leaf" and that sort of thing. That's when a bad attitude was generally accepted as a bad thing -- insubordinate, intemperate, and incorrigible.
Of course, I used to think anarchy was pretty romantic, too. That was before we actually had it. Anarchy is no longer romantic because it is the commonplace. It fell into the wrong hands: everybody's.
Today's attitude is a mixture of anarchy, and narcissism. The anarchy comes from the stunning lowering of standards. The narcissism comes from the justification that "we don't know anything and we don't have to know anything. That's good enough for us."
It has crept into the culture. The new radio station calls itself "radio with attitude." What does that mean? It means that the talent on the air has nothing worth listening to, so the host resorts to shouting. Often it's an attack on safe targets like old white guys. That's attitude from the left. The right wing also has discovered attitude. Rush Limbaugh's search-and-destroy skill on the airwaves made a difference in the political playground.
It's style over truth. Republicans even played one-upmanship with feminists and borrowed their term "empowerment" to name their GOP channel on cable, National Empowerment Television. That's attitude.
It has crept into sports with the "I don't need to be a role model" sort of thing and the celebrating that goes on when a player scores while his team trails hopelessly by four touchdowns.
It has crept into advertising, where the California lottery ads boast that getting a winning ticket is like taking credit for someone else's joke (I'm a little touchy about that) or brings one all the exhilaration of "using a postage stamp all over again."
The message is that getting away with something, at the expense of someone else, is the key to success.
Attitude is thriving in American politics. A legislator on Capitol Hill calls the president of the United States, a "scumbag." And the man who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania has trouble telling the truth -- even with cue cards.
Yes, life is difficult, but it doesn't have to be uncivil.
Of course, if M. Scott Peck tried to publish his "The Road Less Traveled" today, the first line, "Life is difficult..." would probably be changed to "Life really sucks, man ..."
It's sad to see people with class and elegance pushed aside.
On C-SPAN, I saw a group of old white guys paying tribute to Charles Kuralt, not long before he died.
Kuralt was roasted by Ed Yoder, Calvin Trillin, Andy Rooney, and Bill Moyers. Just a bunch of tired old codgers wallowing about in civility and eloquence.
"There's something to be said for plainness," Kuralt once wrote.
"And I might add," Moyers continued, "there's something to be said for grace, humility, and humor in a medium growing crude, trivial, and tabloid before our very eyes. Something to be said as well for Penstaff's Gas Station and Poem Factory, for chats with Wahoo McDaniel and Tiger Olsen, and stories of lumberjacks and gandy-dancers, and beer can collectors. Something to be said for news of maple leaves turning and wild mustangs running, and magpies taking to the wing. Something to be said for saluting the minds of the scientist, the soul of the poet, the sound of the flute, and the faith of the believer's heart.
"Something to be said of victimless wit and wisdom that is humble. And something to be said for words, clear words and honest, that get it just right. Something to be said for being reminded that the ordinary endures and is good, and is us."
There's also something to be said for saying something.
Oh, well. I guess Anne is right: I shouldn't worry about the editors at the hip mag, bless their pop culture, pea-picking, post-pubescent hearts.
Besides, one of these days Gwyneth Paltrow's going to be on the cover of Modern Maturity. You wait and see. She's already hip to that.
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Bugger off.
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