A couple weeks ago on Twitter, while trapped in Shreveport, Louisiana filming his most recent movie, SUPER, with Ellen Page and Kevin Bacon, Rainn Wilson re-posted a series of semi-ignorant, semi-offensive messages (I can’t say ‘tweet’) from some guy in Utah calling himself @GOPJD. It was the typical incendiary garbage about gays and AIDS and blacks you get from conservative internet provocateurs. Twenty minutes after the last re-tweet, Wilson posted (I can’t say ‘tweeted’ either) this:
“Let’s take a little break from the ignorance and ugliness and hate.”
When I read Rainn Wilson’s message, my first thought was “UGGGHH!” It was the same reaction I had when I listened to George Clooney’s Darfur speech to the U.N., or I read that Brad Pitt was meeting with Congressional leadership, or I saw the photo of Sean Penn in a canoe floating through the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina. Another actor condescending to me and pontificating about morality. Invariably, I spend a few too many minutes railing against their holier-than-thou attitudes before my wife has to bring me back to Earth.
This time she gave me a bunch of crap about it and, joking around, said “Honey, don’t hate the player. Hate the game!” How could I hate the game?! I thought. I’m not against anything these people are trying to do. Saving Darfur is a noble goal. So is saving victims of Katrina. I’m not pro-Ignorance. I’m not pro-Hate. I love Love. I guess my problem is that hopeful, socially conscious messages always feel so empty and meaningless when they come from famous people who made names for themselves by dressing up and playing Pretend.
You never hear these Rodney King-style pleas come from hard-scrabble Nebraska cattle ranchers or working single mothers or steel country Union families. Some might argue that’s because they are precisely the types of people who perpetrate the kind of ignorance and hate Rainn Wilson is speaking out against. And while there may be some truth to that assertion, I think it is far more likely the reason you don’t hear messages of hope and tolerance from them is that they’re too busy putting one foot in front of the other, struggling to make a living and keep decent clothes on their children’s backs. They don’t have the luxury of concerning themselves with what other people are saying or doing or thinking. They don’t have the time or the energy to wish upon a star for a kinder, gentler America where everyone just gets along. Given the time, I’m sure many of them would probably agree that ignorance and ugliness and hate really suck. But ALL of them would DEFINITELY agree that they don’t suck as much as swallowing your pride and standing on line at a food bank because you can’t afford to properly feed your family this month.
Before I go any further, let me just say that I consider myself a Rainn Wilson fan. I celebrate the guy’s entire catalog. I think he was great on “Six Feet Under”, he is the best part of “The Office”, I even liked his small role in the first 15 minutes of JUNO when Diablo Cody was punishing us with her cleverness. My issue is not with Rainn Wilson, specifically. It’s with who, and what, he represents more generally when it comes to serious cultural issues like intolerance.
Wilson represents a young, wealthy, privileged creative upper class whose members blithely toss around lofty pronouncements of Peace and Love like they’re still infected with the promise of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and are practicing for MTV’s 2010 Rock the Vote. They look down from their homes in the Hollywood Hills—or in Rainn’s case, out from his trailer on the set of his newest movie—and wonder ruefully where all this ugly, ignorant hate is coming from when life is so great…for them. The thoughts dribble out of their brains and onto their Twitter feeds without much consideration for the larger issues at work just beneath the surface. What they don’t seem to understand is from whence it all comes.
Put simply, ignorance, ugliness, and hate are manifestations of fear. Some argue the fears we see expressed today began in earnest with the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. More likely, it exploded in the late ‘70s when the US Supreme Court, in Regents of University of California v. Bakke, tackled the issue of Affirmative Action in admissions and hiring. The Court, in searching for the middle (and correct) path, simultaneously struck down the constitutionality of quotas while establishing racial diversity in higher education as a “compelling national interest.” That was thirty years ago. And while we’ve overcome many of the racial and socio-economic issues Bakke exposed, just as many have morphed and matured and been seized upon by members of the (mostly white) middle and lower middle classes who worry that their interests are being completely passed over in this increasingly complex and fractionalized world.
What does that mean? Well, for example, we no longer concern ourselves simply with gay rights. We wrestle with the issues facing gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans-gendered persons. Racial issues are not so black and white anymore either (pardon the pun), especially with the 2010 census just around the corner. We must now consider what it means to be bi-racial, multi-racial, or a person of color. The same principle applies to the Hispanic population and its various subgroups, each with their own set of discrete social, economic, and political concerns. The attention paid to these subgroups creates a convenient scapegoat for those hurting members of the middle and lower middle classes who fear not that they aren’t getting equal treatment, but rather that they aren’t getting any treatment at all. Then, of course, resentment begins to build toward these smaller, less important interests who, the thinking goes, occupy more and more of our leaders’ time and attention than they deserve and, in the process, screw everybody else. It is a tenuous argument, at best, and one that ignores deeper, more complex, less pleasant realities for easier, more convenient bogeymen.
Unfortunately, at every level of government and society, these working class fears always seem to have real merit…at first blush anyway. Earlier this month, for instance, the Congressional Black Caucus held up a sweeping financial regulatory reform bill under intense lobbying pressure from black-owned Inner-City Broadcasting Company; a single entity comprised of a mere 17 radio stations across the country. It is the perfect kind of story for people like @GOPJD who are always on the lookout for ways to excuse their blatant ignorance and conflate substantive issues for superficial ones. Only superficially was this a story about race and preference. It is, more substantively, about monied special interests and the impact of local politics at the national level. The owner of Inner-City Broadcasting Company, it turns out, is a prominent political force in New York State and a big donor to members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Are people like @GOPJD capable of making that distinction? It’s unclear, particularly as they employ a very special and dangerous kind of stupid—the kind buttressed by “facts” and rhetorical strawmen drawn from conservative media personalities—that exploits real fears and perverts them into the kind of bigotry that oversimplifies and obscures substantive issues like those at play between the Congressional Black Caucus, Inner-City Broadcasting Company, and financial regulatory legislation. What we do know is that their voices, no matter how few, are almost always the loudest. And, as a result, people like @GOPJD become the faces for issues they don’t actually tackle.
It is the @GOPJD’s of the world, after all, who the Rainn Wilson’s of the world cite as evidence when they picture the frustrated grievances of average working class stiffs as angry, hateful diatribes erupting between burps from a group of obese, NASCAR-clad hillbillies sitting in rocking chairs on the porch of a Cracker Barrel after a huge, post-Church lunch.
And why should Rainn Wilson bother to think deeper about it when nothing—certainly not fear—can ever excuse it, no matter the perpetrator? Even if fear could excuse it, Wilson still couldn’t relate. Why would he? He’s a rich, famous actor with a big house (maybe even two), a happy family, a few cars, and the ability to do pretty much anything he wants whenever he wants. That makes him—and his kind—the worst possible people to speak out against “ignorance and ugliness and hate.”
People don’t want to be moralized to by someone who doesn’t understand their hopes and fears, nor what their circumstances look like; even if the moralizer—as in the case of the Wilson-@GOPJD exchange—is 100% right. What could Rainn Wilson possibly know about the kinds of well-founded fear that sometime metastasize into ignorant malignancies when they’ve been co-opted and misappropriated by loud-mouth retards like @GOPJD?
Ahh, but that’s the thing. He SHOULD know exactly what fear is and what it can produce. Let’s not forget; Rainn Wilson is a tall, gawkish, four-eyed drama AND band geek with a head shaped like he grew up inside a Bonzai Kitty jar. He was raised in suburban Seattle and suburban Chicago, lugging his bassoon to and from school every day. He studied theater at Tufts and then got his MFA from the Tisch School at NYU. Don’t think for one second he doesn’t know fear; in his case, fear of mockery and humiliation and ostracism. He’s had a bullseye shaped like Peter Pan stuck to his back since he was old enough to realize he throws like a girl.
The thing is, the fear Rainn Wilson knows grows into something far different than the kind people like @GOPJD exploit. It develops into the bitter, resentful, pessimistic snark of the Gawker culture, where everything sucks and everyone else is stupid. It breeds a wholly different species of ugliness, intolerance and hate. The insufferable elitism and interminable negativity of the Gawker culture has been called the rage of the creative underclass. Which is really just a fancy way of saying their contribution to culture amounts to nothing more than bitching and moaning from a coterie of uninteresting assholes who haven’t done anything of note with their lives.
To his credit, Wilson has avoided the attraction of the Gawker culture’s brand of ugly, hateful intolerance by, among other things, being interesting and doing shit people care about. If one were to ask him how he felt about a place like Gawker, I’m sure he’d use many of the same words he used to describe the contributions of @GOPJD. Yet you never hear someone like Rainn Wilson opining on the Gawker’s of our culture, despite the fact they represent an equally ugly brand of hateful intolerance that comes from a place of fear he would understand. Instead, he focuses his attention on a kind of ignorance he is less likely to understand or identify with, and lobs fortune cookie philosophy at it in response. Philosophy, mind you, that only ever finds like-minded people who nod smugly in agreement between sips from their soy chai lattes and complaints about connecting to Starbucks’ wi-fi from their Macbooks.
If Rainn Wilson and his type really want to take a break from the “ignorance and ugliness and hate”, they should spend some time thinking not just about the kernels of fear from which intolerance sprouts but how those kernels may be popped. While they’re doing that, @GOPJD and his ilk should spend the time looking in the mirror and taking stock of the harsh realities staring back at them. The gays are not destroying the institution of marriage (responsibility-shirking straight people are doing it all by themselves) and they are not secretly trying to recruit your son (he has no style anyway). Affirmative Action is not why you’re son didn’t get into his top choice of schools but the black girl down the street did. The reason is probably that your son is a lazy fucking idiot and the girl down the street did what she was supposed to do. If you were honest about it all, then maybe you could finally see who is really to blame for a lot of the fucked up things going on in this country and you could reach your blame-shifting, scape-goating brethren in a way Rainn Wilson and other hill-dwelling nobility never will.
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Holy crap. That was phenomenal.
Rambling and disjointed. Could have used some serious editing. The incipient “Gawker” argument should be a separate essay – it doesn’t make any sense here.
It’s always someone else’s fault. It’s always someone else’s fault. It’s always someone else’s fault.
I don’t disagree w/Fazerski about the Gawker argument point. That got much longer than it should have, and once it got there I should have excised it for a separate essay.
I’m not entirely convinced that the actors espousing these views are from the privileged class. I think it’s pretty rare for privilege to beget talent and I think we can agree that the Rainn Wilson types are talented. They certainly aren’t in the same class as the assembly line workers and dirt farmers of the US but I don’t think they are usually from the elite class either.
The Affirmative Action sentence has “you’re”, when it should be “your”.
I disagree with the excising of the two paragraphs that deal with Gawker. They explain why Wilson picked the example he did and show the preference for the easier, more alien target that many of us indulge in. It’s a rant, although a well thought out and astute one, and can wander a bit in structure.
On a different note, Pitt’s housing efforts in Louisiana have actually been pretty productive and moderately successful. Sean Penn is an idiot though. I think most of the disgust you and I feel for these celebrities ostentatiously displaying their humanitarian work is due to media coverage.
These celebrities have learned to play the sick, twisted game the media (often staffed by somewhat polite Gawker-style snarks) imposes upon them and attempt to get the two-fer of doing something possibly productive and attention-getting at the same time.
What I’d suggest is perhaps an essay tackling why exactly it makes sense for those politicians to engage in essentially the same efforts – you discuss it briefly with the radio buffoonery.
P.S. – please keep writing, Nils. I enjoyed the hell out of this.
Matt,
I’m not arguing that these celebrities are born of a privileged class. More that they are part of a self-cultivating, self-perpetuating privileged class. I think it’s safe to say that most celebrities who are famous for having actual talent tend to come from modest means. And their dogged pursuit of fame and wealth and celebrity is motivated, in no small part, by the desire to get as far away from those modest means as humanly possible. Not surprisingly, then, this ultimately leads to a significant disconnect between celebrities like Rainn Wilson and the well-intentioned people who @GOPJD claim to represent.
Hi, Nils. I’m a 35 year old and would someday like to grow up and write stories for a living. I don’t have an entourage, so I would like to build a group, preferably bitter and lost (easier to yell at). One question is, how do I keep them daft and dull? I want them to do my bidding, work for free, stroke my ego, etc. Is it effective to continue keeping in contact with them and should I keep yelling at them? My main goal is to take all the credit for the work and visit colleges to molest barely legals.
Anyhoo, congrats on your movie. Thanks for giving us such gems as: “When you get depressed like this, you need to ask yourself What would Tucker
do?, and then go do that.”, and “…stop and ask yourself What Would Tucker Do?, and then do that instead.” You’re starting a cultural phenomenon!
Eagerly awaiting your next piece. Thanks, fat boy.
Your New Year’s resolution should be to produce/create something that is actually entertaining. That would be a great first step.
I’m not sure what you intend, but then again, this doesn’t seem like one of my sharper days. Is it, what would well-intentioned spokespeople comment about, for example, local politics? Just because national politics is tamer these days since dems are steering, doesn’t mean local republicans aren’t keeping up their terrorism. Couple years ago, township supervisors changed to barely democrats from long-standing republicans. Ever since that day, an anonymous newsletter is mailed every month slagging every effort. I could copy the four pages from the trashbin if you want to see an example. Are you wondering what hero or what kind of stand could be effective to change tone of this country? To me, what we have is, indeed, a “vast right-wing conspiracy” hell-bent on Might near and abroad, and it’s best to first isolate them, marginalize them, let sleeping dogs lie, and it will die down, because it’s a group that needs to feel they are part of a majority, moral or otherwise. If it wasn’t for the 2000 close election, we wouldn’t be talking about this. It was that close. Lesson is, we have to stay vigilant.
you know…… i wish it were true that they would do as much to help (the average joe). they spend all their time making sure these people you dislike stay famous instead… sadly. i would say the truth is, you hate for people to do things because stars tell them too. it’s embarrassing honestly….. but you’re also right that saving darfur is a good thing. and if it took someone famous to pull the strings to get it heard, well, i mean at least they’re hearing it. you can’t dismiss the fact that it’s helpful whether you think he’s being a douche or not. seems silly wasting time hating george clooney for using his pull, perhaps that time could be put toward doing the same instead of criticizing. you never know…… i do feel where you’re coming from.
Hello,
My name is JD and I’m responsible for the former @GOPJD account on twitter. I just found this essay this morning and I could not be happier about it. GOPJD was intended to be a character that was so ridiculous and off the wall that it would be almost laughable that anyone could be that extreme and full of hate. My end goal was to spark some sort of social commentary about these real issues. Recently I’ve taken a lot of heat because of this character. In fact, just yesterday my fiancée called off our wedding when she discovered the account because she feared I was a closet hate monger. I tried to explain my reasoning behind the character but emotions were obviously running too high to think straight. So this morning I woke up and began trying to sort through the different commentary out there. Thanks to Rainn Wilson, there is much more than I would’ve hoped. He gave me, at least for an evening, a much larger audience than I could have ever anticipated. But this essay really got to me. THIS is what I wanted to see happen.
I appreciate your rational approach to the issues facing us. Not just the immediate issues but also the underlying problems that cause most of them. I am not a hate monger. I don’t hate blacks, Jews, Hispanics, or the gay community.
Your essay afforded me a sliver of vindication right now when I have none. Thank you.
JD