Read Online Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You by Greg Gutfeld - Free Book Online Page A

students because it was cool to indulge them. It’s not a bad thing, of course, to show compassion. But this was different. Be nice to an insane person in front of your friends, and you’re immediately seen as cooler than your less enlightened pals, as long as the scraggly behemoth doesn’t jerk off in your eye. At times, students got injured because “out of the goodness of their heart” they tried to engage a “quirky eccentric.”In Berkeley, this trait is known as “understanding.” Elsewhere, it’s called “asking for a poo sandwich.”
    I tried once to engage a homeless degenerate, whom I found daily, masturbating in my parking space, behind a dumpster, at school. I tried to reason with him. (I figured we had a lot to talk about.) He only disappeared after I dumped a bucket of warm soapy water on him from the roof, just as he was finishing. I took no pleasure in it, and if I did I would deny it anyway.
    I recall such anecdotes because we need an antidote for the cool obsession with sickness. I do not mean your normal-definition sickness—like the flu, bronchitis, or even cancer—but serious mental illness that filmmakers and editors treat as a silent gift or some sort of romantic novelty, when they shouldn’t. Embracing the mentally ill because you view the illness as a daring rebellion against the status quo helps no one and often leads to the emergency room. Or, in Hollywood, to an undeserved Oscar.
    I am reminded of this as I stare at a recent cover of
Rolling Stone
, a magazine about as edgy as a Hula-Hoop. On the cover is Jon Hamm, the star of
Mad Men
—and get this, he’s wearing sunglasses … and smoking! Yes, when you need cool shorthand for a photo shoot you bring in the heavy artillery of the unimaginitive: shades and cancer sticks. The look on Hamm’s face is one of a man trying so hard to be cool, you might insist it’s a parody. Then you read the caption that accompanies the image—“Don Draper Exposed—How Jon Hamm’s Inner Demons Made Him TV’s Hottest Star.”
    And there you have it: the “inner demons” BS that pops up whenever you need to apply artificial depth to an otherwise mundane subject. Actually, Hamm seems pretty likable, which should have been enough for a writer to illustrate. Either way, I went ahead and read the piece to find the cause of these demons.I found lots of swear words, just enough to create a “bad boy” image for a TV star looking to dirty up his profile. Hamm lost his parents when he was young, which can account for melancholy (as someone who’s experienced similar loss, I can vouch), but let’s face it: Those aren’t the inner demons we were looking for. Inner demons suggest wrenching torment, a secret dark side, a black soul. None of that, to the editor’s disappointment, was revealed. So: No dark side? Dark glasses.
    “Inner demons”—the real kind that cause actual problems—do not exist in sane people. Writers and editors know this. If Hamm actually had inner demons,
Rolling Stone
wouldn’t go near him without a police escort. You know who has inner demons? Bona fide crazy people, like that dead freak in Florida who ate that homeless guy’s face like a pot pie. Inner demons lead to external demons. But for people who traffic in cool, phony mental illness is an elixir put into motion to create entry points of intrigue. And cool. In real life, “crazy” equals serious injury, horrible hygiene, and incarceration. In
Rolling Stone
’s world, it equals cool. And painfully trite covers.
    Magazine editors and their subjects aren’t the only ones guilty of playing the “not everything is in good shape upstairs” routine. But it can only be played if everything else is in good shape otherwise. Meaning, ugly people cannot pull off the romantic, mysterious mental illness. That’s why the Boston Bomber, not Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, made the cover of
Rolling Stone
. If you’re homely, you’d better just win people over with your