On November 7, 2024, I cut the cord on cable punditry. I used to sit in front of the television every night, clicking back and forth between CNN and MSNBC, with occasional painful forays to Fox. But I’m done with it. No more Rachel or Chris or Anderson or Brett feeding my outrage. It was unhealthy to spend my evenings that way, so I stopped. No more going to bed with my head filled with dread and anger.
Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m totally wired into the news of the day (as horrific as it may be). I subscribe to digital editions of AP, The New York Times, Reuters, The Washington Post (still, though I’m wavering), The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and even The Wall Street Journal, and I get alerts from most of them throughout the day. And I read the local newspapers.
In the evening, well, lately I’ve been watching Seinfeld reruns. Every season of the show is on Netflix and I’ve found that viewing a couple of episodes is the perfect palate cleanser to accompany dinner on the couch. No more cable news, baby, as George Costanza might say. I am once again the master of my domain. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
After an hour of Jerry, I read — mostly fiction, and mostly stuff I first read years ago, just to see how it holds up. Much of it doesn’t. J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey? Eh, mostly smoking and self-involved inner monologues. The Sun Also Rises? Off-putting racism, classism, and misogyny. John Cheever? The tribulations of wealthy New Yorkers. Meh. James Salter’s work sustains, particularly A Sport and a Pastime and Solo Faces. But don’t get me started on Robert Heinlein. (Looking at my bookshelves, it’s become obvious to me that I used to read a lot of manly fiction — Jim Harrison, Richard Ford, Thomas McGuane — so I’m trying to work in some more female writers.)
This past week, though, in tribute to the recent death of Tom Robbins, I spent several nights re-reading Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Hoo boy. What I’d remembered from my salad days as a sassy and clever riff on womanhood and sexuality was this time around an overwrought, never-ending slog, loaded with misogynist bilge, creepy sex scenes, hippie philosophizing, and self-referential smugness.
But just when I was about to give up on Cowgirls, I came across this passage deep in the book: “The enemy of the Black is not the white. The enemy of capitalist is not communist, the enemy of homosexual is not heterosexual, the enemy of Jew is not Arab, the enemy of the young is not the old, the enemy of hip is not redneck, the enemy of Chicano is not gringo, and the enemy of women is not men. … We all have the same enemy. The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind.”
That hit home, and it struck me that the current great divide in this country is a result of the ascension of dull minds, or dullards, more precisely. A dullard fears books that challenge their worldview, art they don’t understand, and any sexual or gender deviation from the “norm.” A dullard fears people with different skin, people who speak different languages, people who practice a different religion, people from another country. A dullard thinks Fox News is, well, news.
A dullard spends his days chasing money and power and never has enough of either. A dullard doesn’t want to travel and see the world. A dullard doesn’t think of the needs of others but is intent only on preserving his status quo. Dullards are conformists, threatened by new ideas. It’s why they react with meanness toward those who don’t conform and with cruelty toward the vulnerable.
Dullards want to control what schools can teach. Dullards don’t believe in science. Dullards let their kids get measles. Dullards think Kid Rock is an artist. Dullards think the song “Y.M.C.A.” is a patriotic anthem, not an ode to casual gay sex.
And dullards are suckers for mendacity if it comes from another dullard: When they’re told, for example, that the murderous thug Vladimir Putin is our friend and that Ukraine started a war with Russia, they’re all in. It reminds me of something George Costanza said: “Jerry, just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”