(Not that You Asked)

by Steve Almond

  And if you listen to the leading orators of the Hateocracy—guilty as charged—what you hear is not the articulation of coherent policy aims, but an almost poignant plea for someone to wash their mouths out with soap. In a mature democracy this would surely happen. But we are living in America, so Time magazine writes fawning cover stories about them.

  If you step back for a moment, you will see what hard work these men and women must do! It is quite a remarkable psychological feat to experience a visceral sense of your own victimization while the party you support holds absolute power. It’s that something special, frankly, that shoves representational democracy toward fascism.

  So how do they do it?

  They do it by tapping into their one inexhaustible resource: self-loathing. They take all the ugliness slithering around inside themselves and project it onto those least likely to fight back. I hope this helps explain why Bill O’Reilly (a sexual predator) goes after sexual predators, or why Rush Limbaugh (America’s alpha demagogue) is forever accusing Democrats of demagoguery, or why Ann Coulter (a fame succubus) accuses the 9/11 widows of being publicity whores.

  You are a racist. You kill our boys in Iraq. You should be disowned. You would be a lot of fun to rape. Where do these intimate notions come from is what I’m asking, if not from within the men who wrote them into the world? And what else do they reveal if not a map of their own unbearable fears about themselves?

  Canto XIII

  By Friday evening, I was receiving an e-mail every ninety seconds. Things had gone viral. Some of this was my own fault, in that I provide an e-mail address on my website. (In my defense, I am a writer of short stories. On a good day, I receive thirty e-mails, half of which inquire whether I would like a larger, more powerful penis.) Still, I couldn’t quite figure out how so many people were finding my website.

  Enter Michelle Malkin.

  For those not familiar with her work, Malkin—an American of Filipino descent—recently wrote a book lauding the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Her eerie, squidlike beauty and radiant self-hatred have won her an occasional spot in the Fox News rotation. Malkin is also a ringleader of some import within the cyber-Hateocracy. She was the first to post my letter on her blog, and to provide her readers a helpful link to my website.

  The site Free Republic! went a step further, hosting a reader “forum” about my letter that included the following comment:

  Steve Almond’s email address sbalmond@earthlink.net

  A little further down came this:

  This guys [sic] really an idiot. His address and phone number are published.

  This is a good start!!!!

  Canto XIV

  I am sorry to report that I was neither bound nor gagged by this cyber posse, though I did receive a few harassing phone calls. The most interesting came from a gentleman who identified himself as a newspaper reporter from Villanova University.

  “Can I ask you a few questions?” he said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You voted for John Kerry, didn’t you?”

  “Which newspaper are you calling from again?” I said.

  “Actually, I work at Villanova.”

  “As a reporter?”

  “As a professor.”

  “So you’re not a reporter?” I said.

  Suddenly, he began shouting. “You’re so pathetic! You fucking pathetic liar!”

  “Wait a second,” I said quietly. “Why are you shouting at me?”

  There was a brief silence.

  “All right,” he said. “Okay. I apologize. That wasn’t cool.”

  It was a weirdly poignant moment. I could hear the struggle in this guy’s voice. He was trying so hard to swallow the venom that had prompted his call, trying to assimilate the notion that I was an actual human being—really, I think it stunned him—and that dialing Information and finding my number and actually calling me up and cursing at me, that all this was really, maybe, in a sense…a kind of sickness?

  “What’s going on here?” I said.

  He took a deep breath, as if to gather himself. Then he was roaring again. “Nobody listens to a word you say! That’s why, okay. You know that, asshole? Nobody gives a shit!”

  Canto XV

  As it turned out, though, people did give a shit. People like John Gibson. Gibson has said many things in his career as a pundit. He has said that whites should have more babies, to prevent Hispanics from becoming a majority in this country. He has called Third World nations “little more than spots on the map.” Perhaps the best way to capture the depth of Gibson’s moral vision is to cite his 2005 book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.

  Dante would have stashed the guy in the circle reserved for those who sow discord. I agreed to appear on his show for one simple reason: I had just murdered nineteen of Santa’s elves in cold blood and I wanted to come clean.

  Gibson began the interview by focusing on the figure he considers central to the entire Iraq War debacle: Bill Clinton. I pointed out that Clinton had actually left office six years earlier. Gibson seemed briefly disoriented. He shifted the discussion to an article in Foreign Affairs Quarterly, which he claimed proved Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. When I insisted on returning to the subject of Condoleezza Rice, Gibson broke into a lovely, full-throated monkey screech:

  GIBSON:

  WELL, YOU HAVE CONVINCED YOURSELF THAT SHE’S A LIAR—

  ME:

  I haven’t convinced myself. I’ve researched the facts, John. That’s what you do when you’re a rational adult. You research the facts, you—

  GIBSON:

  YOU DON’T SEEM TO WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING NEW. DO YOU WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE WMD THAT SADDAM HUSSEIN HAD?

  Duty compels me to note two things:

  1. Gibson’s mic was at least twice as loud as mine.

  2. Gibson was lying his fucking head off.

  I know this because I eventually read the article he was citing, something he apparently didn’t do. “Saddam,” the authors note, “found it impossible to abandon the illusion of having WMD, especially since it played so well in the Arab world.” (Italics mine; implied screeching Gibson’s.)

  Eventually, Gibson returned to his default setting—attack Bill Clinton—before proceeding to full meltdown.

  GIBSON:

  Did you think lying to a judge was a good thing?

  ME:

  Yeah, you know, that’s what all of us…lefties advocate. And I’m so glad that you think bullying me, an adjunct professor, is going to distract the American people from the fact that this administration is a disgrace and has conducted a foreign policy that is immoral. I’m so glad you think the American public is that stupid, John.

  GIBSON:

  CAN I PRETTY MUCH COUNT ON IT THAT THIS IS WHAT YOU WERE TEACHING YOUR STUDENTS THERE AT BOSTON COLLEGE…THAT WHEN A KID CAME INTO YOUR CLASS. IF HE DIDN’T REPEAT THIS CRAP EXACTLY, YOU WERE GOING TO FAIL THEM? DID YOU FAIL ANY OF THEM IN PARTICULAR?

  Yes, John. I failed the Caucasians.

  Canto XVI

  It will have occurred to you by now to wonder whether I was contacted by any members of that liberal media about which we hear so much. Yes. Exactly one. This resulted in an appearance on a radio show based in Texas, which began unremarkably until a man called in and began to tell me about the International Jesuit Conspiracy, which began in 1371 and involved the covert collaboration of the Vatican and something called, I believe, the Brotherhood of the Orthodox.

  As a Jew, of course, I’m always comforted to hear about nefarious conspiracies that implicate people who are not Jews. Still. Still it was sad to realize that the Hateocracy had me all to themselves. This probably qualifies me as a conspiracy nut, but I really had harbored the hope that some brave media outlet might use my resignation as a pretext to examine the veracity of my essential claim (Condi = liar).

  Not so much.

  I did re
ceive lots of kind notes from individuals. People wanted to tell me what a brave guy I was, what a patriot, and so on. These notes were all well-intentioned and thoroughly disheartening. I hadn’t done anything heroic. I had quit my part-time job. It was a testament to the political lethargy of this country that such a pissant gesture would excite adulation in the first place. In the end, these amens carried no political consequence. They were yet another example of liberals congratulating one another for their noble values rather than confronting the bullies.

  Canto XVII

  I should mention that my mood was also dampened over that long weekend by the circumstances surrounding my reading. I had come to Toronto to serve as the keynote speaker at something called the Sweets Expo. I assumed this would involve a small auditorium full of Canadian candyfreaks.

  But the Expo was being held in a convention center filled with failing confectioners, children in a state of hyperglycemic frenzy, and suicidal parents. The man serving as MC for the Expo was named Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul was dressed in a blazer that resembled snakeskin. He wore many large rings and spoke in an amplified baritone, like Liberace reprogrammed as a boxing announcer.

  “It’s faaaaabulous to have you here,” Jean-Paul boomed. “Now what do you do?”

  “I’m an author.”

  “An author!” Jean-Paul offered me a smile whiter than I had thought chromatically possible. “Terrifique!”

  “Where exactly is the reading venue?” I said.

  We were standing beside a vast stage in the middle of the Expo, upon which children were sullenly devouring bowls of pudding in the hopes of winning more pudding. “What do you mean?” Jean-Paul said.

  “Like, the actual place I’ll be reading.”

  “All the acts are on the main stage!”

  I gazed at the stage again. It was the size of a small soccer pitch.

  “You’re on at four P.M.!” Jean-Paul sang out. “Right after the fashion show!”

  The fashion show featured an array of anorexic models dressed up to look like Tootsie Rolls and jelly beans, if you can picture such products endowed with cleavage. I had the pleasure of waiting around backstage with the models and eavesdropping on them as they discussed, in exuberant detail, the precise method by which they planned to murder their agents. Then the music stopped and Jean-Paul thanked the ladies and introduced me and I took the portable mic and made my long walk to the center of the stage with my book.

  There is a moment in the life of every author when you realize with perfect clarity the depth of your irrelevance. Mine had arrived. Canadians of all ages surrounded me, staring up, waiting for me to do something, anything, that might be worth watching. I had been listed on the program as a world-famous candyfreak, and it now dawned on me that the crowd expected some significant anthropological event. Perhaps I could pass a Pixie Stick in one earhole and out the other. Or I could defecate in the precise shape of a Hershey’s kiss. Instead, I stood under the bank of lights, absorbing disappointment. I tried to figure out how to hold my book with one hand, which led to my fumbling the mic. It hit the stage with a thunderous crack. A child started wailing, then another. I began to read. The crowd looked bewildered. People began to turn away. I pondered whether I might hire an agent, for the express purpose of murdering him. Left with no respectable exit strategy, I dropped the book and launched into this bizarre borscht belt routine that involved dragging children onstage and asking them candy trivia questions. Was it appropriate to call this a keynote speech? Probably not.

  “Fantastique!” Jean-Paul said afterward. “They loved you!” Then he snatched the mic and summoned the salsa dancers to the stage.

  Canto XVIII

  I returned to Boston on Monday, May 15, exactly a week before Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to deliver her commencement speech. The phone was still ringing nonstop.

  “Is this Steve Almond?” one young woman shouted. “The former BC professor guy?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Who is this?”

  “Oh. This is Brandie Jefferson. Of the Associated Press.”

  Brandie was not of that traditional school of journalism that favors simply asking questions. No, her own thoughts were an important part of the interview. She asked me questions like “What’s the point of quitting your job? I mean, isn’t that a little extreme? When I was in college, kids were always protesting something or other and it never did any good.”

  I spent a long time on the phone with Brandie. I was fascinated by the idea that the Associated Press would hire someone so unprofessional. I also knew that most newspapers would be pulling her story off the wire. Our conversation thus took on an aspect of supplication. I felt like a mad courtier pleading my case to an idiot princess.

  I’m not calling Brandie Jefferson an idiot. Really, she’s just a typical American young person, happily cocooned within her own radical naïveté. The notion that her leaders might lie to her, that they might be making apocalyptic decisions on her behalf—that was all so…sixties. Politics was really just a second-rate Reality TV show to her, with ugly actors who never kiss. Her world, the one she actually lived in, was like that of my former students: a swirl of flashing screens and frantic buy messages, all of them vivid, smiling, and unbearably lonely.

  For the record, Brandie’s account ran in more than fifty newspapers. It contained a single quote from me, which had been carefully stripped of its context so as to neutralize any disturbing side effects: “I think Americans have lost touch with the idea of sacrifice.”

  Canto XIX

  It was my conversation with Margery Egan that convinced me that I was at last drawing close to the heart of the Hateocracy.

  Egan has built a nifty little career out of bland populist indignation. She has a column in the Herald, Boston’s official tabloid of the Angry White Male, and a radio show on the lesser of our two hate-talk stations. In fact, Egan had badmouthed me on her show the day my letter ran in the Globe. When she called me a few days later, I figured she wanted to invite me to appear on her show. But no. Instead, she had a vital question for her next column. Are you ready for her vital question?

  “How much did you earn as an adjunct at Boston College?”

  Egan had devoted her considerable investigative skills to this question already. “I was told you were paid four thousand dollars per class,” she said gravely. “Can you confirm that?”

  I am hoping that all of you will sleep just a little safer tonight in the knowledge that there are intrepid journalists out there like Margery Egan who stand prepared to defend your freedom by asking the tough questions, not just of this nation’s rulers—in fact, not of them at all—but of adjunct professors who quit their jobs without publicly disclosing their salaries. But being the insouciant democracy wrecker I most assuredly am, I refused to confirm or deny.

  Not to worry. Egan had a second question ready: “How did your letter of resignation wind up in the Globe?”

  “It was an open letter,” I said.

  “Right,” she said, trying her best to sound confused. “But it’s addressed to Father Leahy.”

  I was so stunned by Egan’s playing dumb that I could say nothing for a few moments. “Do you even know the sort of cowardly hatemonger you are?” I said finally.

  Egan was wounded. Why was I so angry at her? She was just doing her job. And part of her job—a big part of it actually—resided in pretending she was a journalist pursuing an actual story related to the public good, rather than a purveyor of poorly manufactured gotcha journalism.

  Dante would have condemned Egan to wander the Eighth Circle of hell, with its boiling lake and false prophets. But I found the transparency of her ploy oddly touching. It must have been quite painful for her to face the possibility that someone might perform a genuine act of conscience. So she did what false moralists always do when those feelings of self-loathing become unbearable—she projected her shamelessness onto me. The emotional logic never changes: If my motives can’t be good, yours must be bad.

 
Canto XX

  As it turned out—a late inning shocker, folks!—Egan got my salary wrong. I was being paid five thousand dollars per class at the time I quit BC, plus free Danish on Fridays. This should tell you a little something about the brutal economic shifts in higher education, which is now stocked to the gills with an academic underclass known as us dumbass adjuncts.

  We do not, as a rule, teach for the money. (My pay stub, when divided by the number of hours I worked teaching a class, came out to less than the minimum wage.) We teach because we dig teaching, because we enjoy our students.

  When I think of them now it is with the utmost tenderness: Beth Dunn, with her fearless prose and her embarrassed giggling. Donald Mahoney, with his redolent chicken fingers and bedhead. All of them juiced up on Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and cigs, muffin crumbs caught in the cuffs of their sweaters. How unbearably young they looked! How hard they took everything! I couldn’t help thinking, as I gazed at them these past few years, how cruel it was for any nation to send such soft humans into war, where their deepest needs—to be understood, to be forgiven—would be torn right out of them.

  So it was more than enjoyment. I loved my students. I depended on them. They filled me with an irrational hope for the future, just by being so kind to one another, so brave in pursuit of the truth locked inside themselves. Every term, one of them would write a story of such reckless beauty that it would take me a few minutes to realize I had stopped breathing. That’s what I had sacrificed by quitting my job: that feeling, the honor of that feeling.

  Canto XXI

  By the middle of the week, I had grown tired of the hate mail, the slimy reporters, my own self-righteous blather. Why then, did I consent to appear on The Hannity & Colmes Show? I suppose because, having come this far, I felt compelled to brave that ninth and final circle, which Dante reserved for political traitors. I knew I would never have another chance like this, and that if I didn’t take this chance—to confront these traitors, to do so on national TV—I would be no different from the rest of the liberal collaborators in this country.