Stifling Irony.
From my daily “Ralph Nader” news feed::
“In Chuck Klosterman’s new book, Eating The Dinosaur, he has an essay about the admirable, terrifying insanity of the literal-minded. (The examples he gives are Ralph Nader, Werner Herzog and, perhaps inevitably, Rivers Cuomo.) He argues that we, irony-drenched mass culture consumers, cannot wrap our minds around such doggedly earnest characters; their inability to do anything with a wink makes it impossible for us to relate to them.”
I’m gonna read the essay tomorrow and know more. But, even this summary hit me.
I think a lot of my heroes (Ralph Nader, Mister Rogers, Pete Seeger) are: (1) incredibly sincere, incredibly literal; (2) discounted if viewed ironically.
Rogers literally believed that everyone was special, literally believed being kind to our neighbors was key to a successful society and literally believed that the best way he could implement that was aiming his message at children. Viewed ironically, he’s a creepy, slow-speaking out of touch old man. To me, he was fighter in a social movement for individual dignity and community spiritedness.
Nader sincerely believes that citizens have a right to assemble, to petition their government, to demand solutions to their grievances. He even might take this as far as the literalization of the right to run for President when you believe the field is too limited. He takes the needs of the phrase “democracy” seriously. Yet, viewed ironically, this seems like, again, an out-of-touch, egotistical, “Unreasonable Man.” But, that’s only when you assume that everyone does everything with a wink, that no one could literally be a complete, participatory citizen.
So, I guess I aspire to be one of those “doggedly earnest characters,” that us ironics can’t wrap our minds around.
