Armavirumque, Mar 04, 2005 10:46 AM

There’s nothing funny about outrage dying

by Stefan Beck

Bob Dole asked, "Where’s the outrage?" It turns out it isn’t lost, only misplaced--routinely. Consider two recent events that have provoked wailing and gnashing of teeth: a college president doing his job and a pop star trying to inspire students at, surprise, surprise, that same president’s college. Did I say "inspire"? I meant "bore with platitudes." To inspire, one might say something unexpected and difficult; of course, that’s the tactic that got poor Larry Summers a one-way ticket to Migraine Junction. So how did Jada Pinkett Smith offend Harvard students with these comments, innocuous to the point of being soporific?

Women, you can have it all--a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career. . . . To my men, open your mind, open your eyes to new ideas, be open.

Jada! You’re at an Ivy League university, not some fundamentalist Christian prayer breakfast. No doubt many of the women in that audience want a loving woman. Now you stand accused by the BGLTSA of making "heteronormative" comments. Never mind that anywhere but Castro Street "hetero" is, statistically speaking, "normative." Without intending to, Smith gave Harvard students a gift more precious to them than wisdom: something to whine about.

Some BGLTSA members were uncomfortable. Whenever I hear that word I reach for my revolver. Men and women in Iraq, many the same age as these Harvard kids, have no time for the mental gymnastics one need do to "take offense" to a canned speech. In Evan Wright’s Generation Kill, about the Marines of First Recon, he writes, "In my civilian world . . . half the people I know are on anti-depressants or anti-panic attack drugs because they can’t handle the stress of a mean boss or a crowd at the 7-Eleven."

Or a speech that doesn’t indulge the porcelain sensibilities of a privileged college student. Or a question that doesn’t genuflect to the prejudices of a wildly overpaid college faculty.

I thought about all this when I came upon the latest issue of the New York Press, the cover of which shows a young Pope John Paul II and the headline: "There’s nothing funny about this man dying. Or is there?" Matt Taibbi’s "The 52 funniest things about the upcoming death of the Pope" is a m�lange of scatology, violence, and ranting-vagrant incomprehensibility. Some people are shocked and appalled. I’m not. Catholic-bashing is so common and so safe (no pesky fatwas to worry about) it’s a wonder even the most devout Satanists aren’t bored of it by now. I imagine that many Catholics will, like me, just shake their heads and toss the paper aside.

Why is it that things that are offensive don’t generate the same outrage, in degree or in kind, as things that aren’t meant to offend at all? My suspicion is that genuine outrage is seldom felt nowadays. Experience has taught us that there is no insult or provocation so great that it will not rear its head sooner or later--and so when it does, its effect is lessened. It’s a shame to be deprived of one’s moral gag reflex, to be exhausted, indifferent, or despondent in the face of what one should vigorously despise.

Matt Taibbi should know that, much as we might like to be outraged, it’s too late for that. The shock business is in wind-down. The only thing sustaining Taibbi and his ilk is the delusion that pop culture can bludgeon its malcontents indefinitely--but just as torture eventually dulls one’s sense of pain, shock dulls one’s sense of outrage. How, then, have faculty and students at Harvard kept that sense so sharp? Simple: they’re faking it. Their power in the academy demands that they be perpetually injured and entitled. The incredible thing is that anybody buys it anymore.