| "Some Cynical Guy" No. 1:
June 2, 2000
Greetings from Your New Cynical Guy
Come in, come in -- I was expecting you. On the
other hand, you probably weren't expecting ME. If you're wondering
what happened to my predecessor, I'm happy to report that he's alive
and well. He hasn't been sent to Devil's Island or devoured by a
roving band of politically correct zombies. I'm pretty sure he still
has his original limbs and internal organs. The fact is, he was
recently promoted to an Important Executive Position at his place of
employment. That means he won't have the time or even the
disposition to be your Cynical Guy.
Executives are professional optimists; they have
to put their troublesome nay-saying inclinations in a little box
before they can pass through the metal detector that leads to the
corporate boardroom. Soon enough they forget what was in the box,
and they don't miss it. They're too preoccupied with mission
statements, golf, fourth-quarter earnings forecasts, stock options,
golf, expensive cherry-veneer office furniture, golf and whatever
else executives tend to be preoccupied with. Cynicism can't catch
its breath in such a thin and lofty atmosphere.
So my predecessor is a Cynical Guy no longer. I
wish him well in his new life, and I hold him blameless for
abandoning his old column. After all, being a cynic is grueling and
ill-compensated work; medical studies tell us that cynics tend to
die off at a rate several times that of the general populace. We're
prematurely condemned to become plant food, while our optimistic
brethren survive another ten or twenty years to grow begonias and
coo about their grandchildren.
Cynicism, the good doctors tell us, turns out to
be as potentially fatal as smoking unfiltered cigarettes or
consuming significant quantities of lard. A cynic grumbles about
injustice, and his reward is an even GREATER injustice: a hasty trip
to the compost heap. How unfair... how deplorably shoddy... how
shortsighted of the gods to cull such indispensable citizens from
the mooing herd. The world needs its cynics the way Margaret Dumont
needed the Marx Brothers, the way Snow White's stepmother needed the
magic mirror to tell her she was no longer the fairest in the land.
After all, what is a cynic but an honest and unrepentant observer of
the hard truth?
The truth may set you free, but it can also get
you into hot water. Aside from risking an early visit to the
mortician, cynics typically incur the wrath of politicians,
moralists, corporate chieftains and other good citizens with
impeccably trimmed lawns. We're invariably cast as the heavies in
the black hats, the enemy of all that is pure and delightsome. If
you were to believe our press clippings, you'd think we spend our
free time shooting bluebirds and spray-painting obscenities on
statues of Susan B. Anthony. Nothing could be further from the
truth. For example, I'm an enthusiastic birdwatcher myself, though
I've been known to eat an occasional chicken or duck in my more
abandoned moments. I really have nothing against Susan B. Anthony,
either -- even though her face was responsible for the
sorriest-looking coin in U.S. history.
I say it's time we rehabilitated the public image
of cynics. We have to remind the tidy-lawn folks that we're not a
patch of crabgrass in their midst. We're more like dandelions,
adding a dash of color to the monotonous green expanses of the
suburban lot. We sprout wherever the conditions are favorable; we
hold our bright heads upright until the Great Lawnmower comes along
and lops them off. We have to remind our pathologically positive
neighbors that our tribal ancestors, the Cynics of ancient Greece,
were philosophers who actually held virtue in the highest regard. It
was that fatal love of virtue that caused them to rail against the
money-grubbers and hypocrites of their day. They'd hang out in the
streets like a pack of dogs ("cynic" is related to the
Greek word for dog), figuratively barking at everyone who deserved
their ridicule.
The biting sarcasm that most people associate with
cynics is simply the flip side of a keen, almost painfully
overdeveloped sensitivity to injustice and folly. In my critically
neglected and widely underappreciated book, The Cynic's
Dictionary, I defined a cynic as "an idealist whose
rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped
into the ground, immediately improving his vision." Most of us
weren't born cynical, after all; an infant doesn't sneer at a bottle
of formula, even though it's a patently bogus substitute for the
real thing.
So how do innocent kids grow up to be cynics?
Maybe some of us couldn't get over the shock of discovering that our
Christmas loot wasn't personally delivered by St. Nick and his
flying caribou. Or we had to watch Ronnie Blondowski get elected
sixth-grade president because he bribed his constituents with free
Caramellos. Or we suffered through the usual traumatic rejections by
alpha-adolescents at high school dances. Maybe we never won the
approval of our peers in the Junior Astronomer's Club. Then we had
to settle for Bovine State even though our SAT scores obviously
should have catapulted us into Princeton. Or just maybe we
distinguished ourselves in college, fine-tuning our minds and
amassing a vast knowledge of medieval Dutch philology, only to
inaugurate our post-graduate career at the local Howard Johnson's
Motor Lodge. When we finally won a respectable job, we discovered
that a grown-up Ronnie Blondowski was our boss.
Each successive year brings new insults and
absurdities to give us cause for howling: self-important yuppies
whose cell phones ring obnoxiously at movies and funerals, zealous
soccer moms in their juggernaut SUVs, restaurant menus so
insufferably pretentious that you need a glossary to decipher them,
$800,000 instant mansions on quarter-acre lots, bad films with
budgets greater than the annual Gross Domestic Product of Sierra
Leone, stand-up comics whose profanity-to-wit ratio is about
five-to-one, hip-hop music blasting from the car windows of scrawny
teenage white kids, cheesy bestsellers displayed by the bushel on
bookstore tables while immortal classics (like The Cynic's
Dictionary) go unread. It's not a pretty world, but SOMEBODY
has to squawk about it. I guess I'm the appointed squawker now.
So here I am, your new cynic-in-residence. I hope
you enjoy my weekly rants and reflections, and that you'll tell your
friends what a perceptive fellow I am. I'd like to be modestly
famous before I die -- even if I don't ascend to the same exalted
rank as Fabio or Jennifer Love Hewitt. Remember that I'm
significantly increasing my odds of premature death with each
cynical word I write. But that's all right; don't weep for me. I've
lived a reasonably full life, even though I've never had children or
visited Orlando, Florida. Look at it this way: I'm willing to take
the bullet for you. While my arteries gradually harden from the
consequences of my unrelieved cynicism, you get to enjoy the fruits
of that cynicism once a week. Then, three or ten or ninety minutes
later (depending on your reading speed), you're free to return to
the health-giving environment of your school or workplace.
Before I go, I should add that I don't look
anything like the cranky caricature of a cynic that graces my column
here at UPBEAT. The same caricature adorned my predecessor's column
and I'm told it didn't look like him, either. It's simply an
artist's rendering of a generic, all-purpose, "been-there,
done-that, so-sue-me" cynic. But I feel confident that I'll
grow into that craggy face if I stick around here long enough.
Within two or three years, that cynic's visage will be mine and I'll
wear it proudly -- furrowed brow, balding noggin, middle-aged jowls
and all. Wish me luck.
"Some Cynical Guy" is ©2000 by
Bridget Petrella Media Relations and appears here with their permission.
"Some Cynical Guy" column archive:
2002
81 -- A Brisk Walk Through the Ruins
80 -- The Fountain of Futility
79 -- Farewell to the Big House
78 -- The Cynical Guy Contemplates Cell Phones
77 -- Rich and Poor in Paradise
76 -- Dead Ducks: A Tale of the Food Chain
75 -- Old Comedians Just Fade Away
74 -- Suburbia Comes to Manayunk
73 -- When Nestlings Won't Leave the Nest
72 -- The Curse of High Standards
71 -- Inside the House of Horrors
70 -- The Post-Yuppie Handbook
69 -- Spring Reflections
68 -- Priestly Perversions
67 -- British Teeth: An Apology
66 -- The Sniffling Snout
65 -- Bullies with Social Skills
64 -- Supermarket Rage
63 -- Is the U.S. Really the Greatest?
62 -- The Holes in Our Armor
61 -- A Breath of Used Air
60 -- The Cynical Guy Has Sex
59 -- Let's Abolish the Seven-Day Week!
2001
58 -- Why Worry About the Future of Books?
57 -- The Friendly Face of Evil
56 -- Why We Live Where We Live
55 -- The Cynical Guy Discovers Talk Radio
54 -- Kite-Flying and Other Crimes
53 -- My Night as a Socialite
52 -- Gardening Is Not for Sissies
51 -- Invaders of the Honeysuckle
50 -- To Be a Cat
49 -- The Upside of Terrorism
48 -- The Vanishing Nerd
47 -- Anger Management for Cynics
46 -- Let's Level the Playing Field for Disadvantaged WASPs
45 -- First Impressions, Lasting Impressions
44 -- Close Encounter with a Go-Getter
43 -- Cheering for a Perennial Loser
42 -- The Cynical Guy Reads the Tabloids
41 -- When Does the Good Part Begin?
40 -- Confessions of an Internet Addict
39 -- The Decline of Punctuation and Civilization
38 -- Oh Baby, What a Nightmare!
37 -- The Cynical Guy Watches 'Xena: Warrior Princess'
36 -- A Night-Stroll into the Void
35 -- In Search of the Elusive Wild Tomato
34 -- Getting in Touch with Your Inner S.O.B.
33 -- The Lure of the Lurid
32 -- Black Tie and Beard Stubble
31 -- In Heaven There Is No Pez
30 -- Did You Make the Forbes Celebrity 100 List?
29 -- Redesigning Mt. Rushmore
28 -- On Listening to Dead Voices
27 -- Selling Your Soul on eBay
26 -- Sympathy for Colonel Klink
25 -- Democratic Celebrities in Exile
24 -- High School Revisited
23 -- A Farewell to Bachelorhood
2000
22 -- Requiem for a Middleweight
21 -- Is There a Gene for Tackiness?
20 -- How the Beautiful People Entertain Themselves
19 -- The Cynical Guy Gets Behind the Wheel
18 -- The Fickle Finger of Fame
17 -- Adventures in Bodybuilding
16 -- Some Don't Like It Hot
15 -- The Cynical Guy Watches Oprah
14 -- Sports Parents: Menace to Society?
13 -- Airfare Is No Fair at All
12 -- There's No Such Thing as 'New and Improved'
11 -- Celtomania!
10 -- The Naked Pate
9 -- Vanishing Act
8 -- Bush vs. Gore: It Could Be Worse
7 -- Who Wants to Be a Survivor?
6 -- Adventures in Heart Attack Prevention
5 -- Where Men Are Men
4 -- Thoughts While Listening to the Car Radio
3 -- History Is HISTORY
2 -- The Great Casino
1 -- Greetings from Your New Cynical Guy
|
