Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

I heard something interesting on the radio the other day that got me thinking, a rare enough event, not the thinking part but the hearing something on the waves. A gentleman was being interviewed. He had been born in England. When he was ten years old, his family moved to the United States, somewhere in the mid-west, where he spent his adolescence. When in his late teens, he went back to England for a visit. What did he notice about his behavior that was different from his UK chums? He said: "It struck me how aggressively American culture trains its young people to have an opinion about absolutely everything." That's what I thought interesting. And, of course, as the twig is bent

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I recall my own teen years, also growing up in the Midwest. When I was 14, the "slam pad" fad raced through school. We all had little spiral steno pads, bound at the top. Each page had a name at the top, a fellow student, a teacher, perhaps a public official. Some pages featured categories: music, sports, etc. We would swap the pads in the hallways and then scribble, during class, unless caught by the teacher, in which case the pad was seized, short-- often one-word-- entries giving our opinions on just about everything. At 14 we were experts-in-training in opinion. I suppose some version of this slamming has always been around; these days, it's probably done through text messaging.

Years later, when I became deeply embedded in gay life, I became familiar with the types you meet in gay world (I have identified ten, well, maybe ten-and-a-half; I presented my complete taxonomy of this phenomenon in this column many years ago and it has aged well). Most common among the types was the critter I called "Edna Expert." Edna has an opinion on everything-- hedge funds, condo conversions, travel destinations, Prune-Whip (a culinary concoction about which Edna once noted: "The perfect Wasp food, no calories and bowel-moving"), the catalogue of Betty Carter, the subtleties of lighting in film noir-- and on and on. Edna had clearly been patterned in that "slam pad" way, trained young and intensely-- only, of course, in gay life, such a characteristic is always somewhat more exaggerated than elsewhere in the population.

What does all this spouting of opinions signify? For the teens, it seems obvious that there are three purposes: training of social aggression, jockeying for status, and inculcating an appreciation of the importance of the trivial and insubstantial in this culture and its utter prevalence. (As I write this I am listening to a local popular music station and the announcer is soliciting us to call in with our opinions on something of no significance.) There are two among my collection of friends (a small and shrinking entity) who, in conversation, are completely dedicated to the opinion format. Talking with them is like being a guest on a Sunday morning TV chat show. The talk is never very deep; the opinions are headline-sized and mimic sound bites, if we still call them that. I find it very exhausting, probably because my skills at chit-chat have atrophied (were never very strong to begin with), and when it comes to pop people and pop events, I admit many have just passed me by in a flash and I had neither the interest nor energy to form an opinion one way or the other. I still have no opinion about Bob Dylan! Perhaps I should be classified with what I regard as the oddest genus of the American Polity-- The Undecided.

"The fish rots from the head." This was a memorable remark made by Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis when he was running for US President, in 1988, as the nominee of the Democratic Party. The remark was a reference to the political culture that had developed in the years Ronni RayGun was President. I suspect it was an old Greek adage. Dukakis's father, a distinguished medic, was a Greek immigrant from the island of Lesbos. I bring this up because it seems to me that the pervasive opinion-culture is not only mind-numbing in itself, it drives out space for critical thinking, and given the folks who run the opinion-chat machines, is antithetical to it. That's one reason the right-wing cadre on the radio and the boob toob do so well. Commercial broadcasting is tailored for the bellicose braying, the snap opinion, the snarling sneer. Complexity, nuance, an alternative narrative, even a wry sense of humor don't play in a culture of sensation. No wonder people go crazy-- there's so little food for the mind. The right-wingers really do want to keep a culture of ideas from the population. They don't want questions and discussion; they want opinions.

Minority cultures, some of them, can be different, a little more sensitive-- empathetic at least. This was certainly true of gay culture in the early days after Stonewall, excepting the Edna Experts, who will always be with us, bless their hearts. But some in our ranks have been transformed by the bloviating breed; I won't mention any names, but they are lesser lights and make me miss writers like Andy Kopkind even more. Oh well. I will keep my opinions, if I still have any, to myself.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com