Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You

by Greg Gutfeld

  The aim of being cool, really, is to say, “I am not like them. I am not a dork. I’m relevant.”

  Which is why everything done these days springs from a fear of dorkiness despite the fact that it’s the uncool dorks who make the trains run on time. There’s nothing more boring than a train schedule, but without it how would the hip find the right subway to that Williamsburg flea market where they can spend one hundred bucks on a T-shirt from a late-seventies Cheap Trick tour? (I was there—a stoner threw up on my shoes.) Without the uncool, the cool wouldn’t exist. Why is that? Because cool contributes nothing to “how things work.” Oh, something that appears cool can work (see everything made by Apple). But making such products does not rely on its makers being or appearing cool, but thinking and working hard. Behind that cool is a ton of very old-fashioned hard work performed by anonymous badasses. But they hide it—like the ugly coal plants that ultimately fuel every electric car.

  The definition of cool: popularity without achievement. It’s how President Obama got the youth vote. Ask any kid who voted for him, “Why did you do it?” and the convoluted, wide-eyed answer will ultimately translate into: “He’s cool and that other guy wasn’t.” (Now they’re paying the brunt of Obamacare. Suckers.) The media pushed this to the hilt, and much of the public bought it. Hope and change is cool because it sounds cool, even if it’s undefined. An activist government is cool too, because giving stuff away is cool—especially when it’s other people’s stuff—and therefore perceived as philanthropic. But philanthropy without feeling the pain in your own wallet is super-easy to do, and about as cool as giving away your roommate’s food while he’s at work trying to pay for that food.

  So what is perceived as cool in today’s world, when it’s really the opposite?

  Bureaucrats spawned in teachers’ lounges, chiseling away at your income through punitive taxation designed purely to redistribute wealth. They care, you don’t. You must be evil.

  Dependency as an acceptable lifestyle, independent of achievement. To the cool there is no shame in letting someone else pay your way, even if you could probably pay it yourself. The government is your new boyfriend, with money (not his—mine and yours) and an apartment in DC. Embrace him. He absorbs the risk and distributes income so you can pursue whatever else strikes your fancy. In the old days feminists would mock women who depended so much on a man. Today if the man is the government, not so much. A man who opens the door for you is a Neanderthal; a bureaucrat who pays for your pills? A hero.

  Ridiculing women, minorities, and gays who reject this culture of dependency and victimization. They heroically say no to the worst kind of hood—victimhood. The lie here is that the cool defines itself as being outside the rigid structures of society, yet condemns those who really achieve that position in life. It’s how Ben Carson can be roundly ridiculed, despite immense, earned success. And is there a truer rebel alive than Mia Love? Not to the media who ridiculed her.

  Fake work that doesn’t require building, moving, or doing things. Anthony Weiner, a man whose only talent is aiming his camera at his dick, can embarrass himself and his family, yet happily return to run for elected office. He does so for two reasons: He doesn’t believe he should have to actually “work” like the rest of us and he thinks the constituents agree. His return to the public eye (much like Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford) says a lot about a culture that has lost the ability to define real work. No wonder Mitt Romney was mocked as a superficial loser with no real accomplishments (as defined by the media). All he did was build a business empire and make money, for himself and others. And then, Christ almighty, he gave a ton of it away. Good riddance to the mean, old evil Mormon. Better to elect a guy like Obama, who spreads others’ wealth around by force.

  Movements that reject American values in favor of American guilt. See Occupy Wall Street as one example, rejected by sensible Americans who dislike public defecation but coddled by the media, which ultimately left when the shit hit the fan, and street. How else can a Weather Underground terrorist end up teaching our kids on campuses instead of waiting for the needle on death row?

  Anti-Americanism touted as appeasement to our international adversaries. It’s never “their” fault; it’s always ours. Even when their brutality exists despite our benevolence (see the money we shovel into Egypt, as they continue to torture and kill Coptic Christians, a sect treated as an underclass by the Muslim Brotherhood). We used to advocate assimilation to recent immigrants; now we wonder if we haven’t assimilated to them enough. The depth of this anti-exceptionalism is frightening. We have people flocking from horrible countries to ours with hopes of replicating here the same systems that destroyed their countries. It’s happening in England, France, and now in Boston. Because of the cool view that America is fundamentally flawed, we cannot question those who come here to undermine the free-est, greatest country ever devised. Maybe it is our fault for the Boston Marathon bombing, ponder the progressive jackasses among us. And it allows for an insidious relativism, as witnessed in the comparisons of Muslim extremism to other kinds of religious extremism in the United States. But it’s not apples to apples. It’s apples to razor blades.

  Evil in film as a lesson plan for a romantic, rebellious reality. The cool’s hold on society’s throat is at its finest in the film industry. Any person, organization, or thing that rebels against structure is heroic, while anyone with a BlackBerry or a briefcase is Hollywood shorthand for evil. He probably just ate a baby. And not a free-range one, either.

  If you question whether abortion should be seen as different from removing a tumor, then you must hate women. How can you deny happiness to everyone? (Fetus not included.) And that’s why the cool—married to abortion at any cost—seem reticent on the murderous abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. If he had used a gun, it would have been the subject of an awful celebrity-laden music video.

  Assorted slugs on death row are cool; their victims, forgotten roadkill. This theme runs through art and pop culture like E. coli in a Tijuana cafeteria. There are more movies, songs, plays, and websites about killers than about their victims. Victims are boring; their tormenters, deep. Hence there are songs about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and poems about the Chechen bombers, but none about the folks they killed. Disguised as empathy, this behavior is simply an exercise in ego: The empathizer wants you to view them as cool for seeing beyond the obvious evil of the act. To the cool, empathy is “deep.” It’s “challenging.” To a tougher, more realistic past America, it was “bullshit.”

  Politics is way cool, as long as it’s progressive. Conservatives by nature hate politics and politicians. Liberals love them because it makes them feel cool. It’s a must for everyone to “be involved.” Talk to any liberal friend and they’re running for office even when they’re simply running their mouth. “I have to tell you about the bake sale we had for homeless water snakes.” No you don’t, but you will. Meanwhile, if you talk about an issue that doesn’t fit preapproved hip criteria, then the “it’s cool to be involved” premise goes out the window. Say something about being pro-life, or pro-defense, or pro–death penalty, and the crowd around you will fall silent. It’s like admitting to cannibalism (unless the meal is a Republican).

  Embracing amnesty and open borders. Sure, other countries have borders (the ones most people are fleeing from), but discussing the possibility of an American border is smeared as racist—the ultimate in uncool. Am I a bigot for buying locks for my apartment door? No, but I’m probably racist for writing that. Amnesty is cool because it’s so damn benevolent. “Hey you guys—why don’t you just stay here, and not worry about citizenship!” Cool people love to make friends, and they will make eleven million of them. Note: To be cool, it’s way cooler to have more brown friends than white. No one ever brings up amnesty when discussing immigrants from Eastern Europe or Ireland; they don’t need more white friends. I wonder how the cool would feel if the new arrivals were looking to crash on their couch on the Lower East Side? As long as it�
��s Arizona’s problem, it’s not theirs.

  Anything old is uncool. You can thank the media, of course, which seeks to portray anything traditional as dorky and outmoded. The stuff that worked before (in the good old days) apparently is stupid because it worked so well that it afforded us the luxury to trash it. It’s great that Mommy and Daddy did all that uncool work, so you could sit in your air-conditioned classroom and shit all over them, to the approving eye of your ponytailed professor. He’s just such a rebel. He writes letters to Mother Jones! (However, despite a distaste for tradition, the hip will pay thousands for a table made from salvaged, vintage “repurposed” snowshoes.)

  Hero worship of celebrities based on fake edginess. It pays to remind the worldwide media that Johnny Depp is not really a pirate, despite the jewelry and mascara he wears around the house. He’s a walking thrift-store lamp. Doesn’t anyone remember when he was just a twerp trashing hotel rooms? This worship of the play-actor further diminishes real work at the expense of the fake and affords a respectability to their political leanings that is wholly undeserved. Speaking of, I really hate …

  Destruction masked as achievement. Do moronic rock stars ever think of the maid when they trash their twenty-fifth hotel room? No rock video ever shows the poor minimumwage worker (likely someone’s mother) cleaning up that mess in slow motion; yet that’s how all pop star destruction is depicted. As long as it’s in slow motion, anything is cool. When Justin Bieber peed in that bucket and then swore at a picture of Bill Clinton as he exited a New York club, who did he apologize to? Not the poor cleaner who uses that bucket to mop floors. But to Clinton. Clinton’s advice in response: Choose your friends wisely. (Spoken like a man with unsavory secrets.) It would have been nice if Bill said, “Treat people who aren’t as lucky as you with respect,” but then that would be against character. And would have creeped out the strippers.

  Victimhood. I often refer to the elevation of the David and Goliath myth as a universal storyboard dictating that it is always moral for the smaller party to win a battle over the bigger, even if that smaller and weaker party is evil. If America was a tooth, the cool would root for the cavity. A criminal is just a victim of your own success. And this must be rectified, by punishing you, either by taking your money through taxes or freeing the criminal so he can violate you one more time. Mumia Abu-Jamal—the cop-killing hero—must be innocent. He’s got dreads! That’s an even smaller minority than “black males on death row.” If he were also transgendered, he could be the coolest person in America!

  Code words. Language that aptly describes things is uncool. However, euphemisms created to avoid hurting the feelings of our adversaries are not. Cool is removing judgment from your lexicon. Hence, Fort Hood terror is “workplace violence.” Which I guess makes Hurricane Sandy a “weather tantrum.” Code words are now being employed to erase the meaning of welfare, unemployment, loafing. Stress is now a word used to describe everything that was previously known before as “life.” Saying “that’s life” is uncool. Say “that’s stress” and you’re an expert. Referring to someone who is in this country illegally as an “illegal” is totally uncool—and on some campuses, “illegal”! In the same vein, calling someone a “drug dealer” is bad too. From now on they’ll be known as “unlicensed pharmacists” or “pharmaceutical entrepreneurs.” Shoplifters are “nonspending customers.” Abortion is “women’s health,” and raising taxes is “revenue growth.” All of this is a clue: Because the cool cannot call something what it is, they must resort to this Orwell-speak to fool us into believing they’re not morally bankrupt. When you think about it, “cool” is just a cooler word for “liar.”

  Talking about your identity. If someone cool happens also to be gay, bisexual, transgendered, Raëlian, or Eskimo, you and I will hear about it. If you are less proud of what you do than who you do, then you’re considered cool. We’ve moved so far from a color-blind society that even the color-blind have their own society. If you need to tell me you’re gay, I’m thinking you’re not really gay. You’re just boring. Right now, as I write this, the media is reporting that a gay man is trying to make the NFL as a field goal kicker. Remove “gay” from the equation, and the reporter has to find another story. That story, however, will never be “Gay man doesn’t give a shit about being gay.”

  Stretch this infestation of cool-aid over the past three decades, and it’s no wonder the streets are flooded with asexual mopes who talk from the backs of their throats as they bowl in Brooklyn, ironically. How we got to a place where men in skinny jeans rank higher in achievement and status than men in military-issued camouflage is a mental journey beyond the limits of my simple, sodden brain. (Granted, it’s a short journey.)

  Why is this duopoly, the cool versus the uncool, so important? It won an election, among other things. Showbiz beat substance. Style creamed success. This happens in a culture that salivates over youth, glamour, and glibness. Fashion has no use for Mitts.

  But the funny thing about cool? It’s not cool. At all. In fact, what’s truly cool is the rebellion against the perceived, predictable tyranny of cool. Conservatives, in my mind, should be cool. But they aren’t. Some of it is their fault. You can’t wear a blue blazer everywhere or carry a worn-out copy of Atlas Shrugged and not be immune to criticism. I’ve tried. They were brutal to me at the gym. But that’s not all of it.

  Why aren’t conservatives cool? It’s a fair question. From my experience being around conservatives, it’s extremely frustrating how dismissive they are of “weird” things, and that hurts them. For example, I choose my music for my segments on The Five. My choices are never met with “That’s good” or “That sucks.” It’s always rewarded with anguished looks on the other panelists’ faces and the two-word review, “That’s weird.” Conservatives must understand that what is often perceived as weird becomes, later, something universal and accepted. (See Cool Whip and Boxer Briefs, separately.)

  The truth is that conservatives do have the cool message. It’s, “Step off.” Or, for you old-schoolers, “Don’t tread on me,” which applies domestically and internationally. It’s not cool to have a government intrude into every aspect of your life, under the guise of “help.” The new electorate must learn this, or we are doomed. The so-called cool seems cool with drones (i.e., passive, antiseptic warfare). How uncool is that?

  But we know there is nothing cool about dependency. There’s nothing antiseptic about drones. And there’s nothing cool about anti-exceptionalism, increased regulation, government control in all sectors, and a factional country based on race and gender. We are the rebels. What’s cool is building businesses, military supremacy (which keeps us free to be cool), unity over division (once called patriotism), individualism, and competition (which is the universal engine for self-improvement). All of this may sound dorky, but it’s as cool as Pegasus making out with a unicorn (i.e., very cool). We need to teach people how to love this country for the reasons that made this country what it is. And those reasons are so cool, it’s no wonder Sean Penn, Michael Moore, and Robert Redford don’t get it. They hate those reasons as much as they hate you for cherishing them.

  It shouldn’t be too hard, as an anti-cool campaigner, to win converts with a message like that. But we haven’t. Which means this book must be a wake-up call for the rest of us, the uncool. It’s time for the reign of the new cool. We have the message. We just need the messenger. He doesn’t need a leather jacket. He just needs a thick skin.

  Fact is, the desperate desire to be cool has skewed our culture toward nihilism, carelessness, and ineptitude. It is now cool to be an idiot. A jackass. It’s cool to be a failure, as long as your failure is the basis for a reality show. And on the reality show you can do what’s considered ultimately cool: “raise awareness.” How else can you explain the Bravo network? It’s a machine devoted entirely to the adult tantrum.

  In the rest of this book, I will explore how cool has undermined all the best things about America. I will present a case as to why
the desire to be hip is destroying the hippest thing we have: our ridiculously cool exceptionalism. I will reveal how the adolescent media and their infantile preoccupations are killing us, figuratively and literally. And then I will nominate the truly cool people on this planet who can defeat these hacks and phonies. They are the real matinee idols of this new movement—people I refer to as Free Radicals. There are more than you think. And far more than the cool want you to know.

  UNCTUOUS OCCUPATIONS AND POPULAR PURSUITS

  You know what defined a cool job in the old days? I don’t. I wasn’t born yet. That’s why it helps to read other people’s books. In Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter’s fantastic tome The Rebel Sell, they mention a study from the 1950s by Vance Packard, which teased out five factors that gave a job prestige. They were: importance of the task performed, the level of authority the job gives you, the know-how required in doing said job, the “dignity of the tasks required,” and, of course, the money made from doing the work. According to Heath and Potter, the results—like my thigh rashes—were “remarkably consistent.” Supreme Court justices were seen as the most prestigious, but also scoring high were exactly what you’d expect if you remember any black-and-white movies: bankers, executives, ministers, and professors. In those movies, they were usually played by Fred MacMurray or Robert Cummings. They had great hair and no visible tattoos. You know they smelled of cigarettes, Brylcreem, and work. They were rarely involved in “raising awareness.”

  How things have changed. With the exception of professors, there’s absolutely nothing still considered cool on that list. Ministers? They’re the butt of jokes. Supreme Court justices? Please, the media even hates the black one (in fact, they especially hate the black one). Executives are just cogs in a machine, and as for bankers—even bankers hate bankers. My God, I’m a right-wing libertarian, and I hate my bank. Yes, as H and P point out, the prestige of all these jobs is “steadily waning,” as the new, cooler occupations are picking up the slack. It’s the “cool, bohemian creative types” that now get the chicks, and get movies made about them. Cinematic action is steadily being eliminated by slight men pressing “send.”