Now as white people go, I get a fair amount of respect, even with my generally conservative political views. I don’t look like I have way more than other people because I don’t. I live alone, I don’t bother to shave a lot of the time, I’m skinny and mediocre-looking. I dress frumpy. Nobody dates me for very long. I get crapped on by others in my profession while hacks take my material and get famous with it. My adolescent desire to be Norman Mailer didn’t really pan out and I wear the shrugging disappointment on my face.
In other words, I get a pass. I don’t get hassled if I’m chain-smoking outside a Spanish laundromat at two in the morning on a Wednesday. I carry myself like I’m supposed to be there. I keep my head down, I don’t judge anybody, I don’t smile, I don’t make trouble, I don’t let anybody touch me, I’ll give somebody a cigarette if they need it. It’s fine. (THAT’s how you gentrify, kids. Take notes).THAT's how you get a ghetto pass, kids -- shamble about like vintage Tim Roth and emanate self-loathing. And no touching! Black people respect that.
But some cats can't hang --
But lo and behold, this other white guy in line at Wendy’s was reading a book. Some frilly little kind of book. It could have been Emily Dickinson for all I know. He was dressed in smug glasses with a little scarf and some kind of twee little indie petticoat...
He ordered some kind of salad-type thing and a chicken sandwich with all kinds of preconditions: no this, no that, like, uh, no I don’t want that on it. Whatever. It was thoroughly disgusting. I felt the angry eyes of other people in line linking me and this loser together as though we came as a socioeconomic couplet. I almost had to apologize to the crowd.I half expected Howley to swagger up and offer this young gent from cubesville some new colors for his paintbox. Then I remembered: No human contact!
How did this person turn out this way? Is he really so oblivious that he can’t even go to a downmarket Wendy’s without stoking an undercurrent of racial tension that everybody went to the restaurant on a Sunday to just forget about?You could feel it, brah. Dudes be like "damn!" What? No, they didn't say "damn" -- it was in the undercurrent!
Is he actively trying to be a punchable asshole?
And here’s the bitter irony: THAT guy is probably some kind of liberal blogger who makes his living accusing Republicans of being racist.Wait. Waaaaaait.
He didn't just --
Okay I double-checked, he did.
THAT guy is exactly like the kind of dweeb who would Tweet at me after this column runs and tell me I’m making all sorts of culturally insensitive “microaggressions.”Also the kind of dweeb who'd hog the couch at this party, talking to this chick when I'm tuh-RY-ing to get with her, TODD!
Much has been made lately of Felix Salmon's advice to young journalists, but really, the best thing to tell them is this: Angle for a wingnut welfare sinecure, and pray for a boss who's too busy to read your copy.
UPDATE. Comments are just too good. From Another Kiwi:
Moby Dick by Patrick Howley. Call me Ishpatrick. A fucking white whale, are you kidding me? In this neighbourhood? Man, get your frilly petticoat ass out of here before the black folks take to you with torches and pitchforks. Me, I'll be down at the Sudz 'n' Spin ignoring all those dumb fucks. Now watch some bastard steal my writing, yeah, it figures.Also enjoy dex's comment, which begins "i don't say he's a great man. patrick howley never made a lot of money..." and several others.
