What would you fight for?


Irony is not a virtue
One of the things I love about the internet is that I can talk with people all over the country. There are some great people out there. Some are people who share my interests. Some are those who share my passions.

They aren't the same people though.

In the U.S., it's the old bi-coastal versus flyover country. The people in flyover country are upfront with what they believe. I may not agree with it, but they are passionate. They are willing to fight for their beliefs.

But I know some people on both coasts who won't fight for their beliefs. If there is too much controversy, they will just pull in the bits that they show to the world. They will blend in. If they don't like the political direction, they will go somewhere else where they can blend in better.

So the week before last, I read this from Libertas.

Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and David Letterman are cut from the same cloth. Not liberal cloth. Gutless cloth. Because they refuse to come down from the ether of irony where nothing touches them and nothing matters and isn’t it all just a joke?. Isn’t everything a joke to them? Well, at least until they tear into someone or something they don’t like. But ask them to defend that mean streak, that pessimism, that smug assuredness and it’s quip time. Insult time. Peanut gallery laughing and saving them time. So smug. So smart. So unserious. And yet these smirkers are taken seriously. They’re quoted and desired guests on news shows (even O’Reilly).

For some reason … They matter.

In Inherit The Wind, Tracy plays a supposed atheist defending the school teacher from Frederic March’s holy rolling prosecutor. Gene Kelly plays a reporter; he plays Jon Stewart, Maher, and Letterman. He plays a smug cynical above-it-all smirker eager to destroy anyone with ideas though he has none of his own; but that’s what makes him better than them — he’s no sucker! – he believes in nothing.

At the end of the film it’s just Tracy and Kelly left in the courtroom. Tracy’s won. March is dead and disgraced. But Kelly wants more blood and is ready to print it when Tracy and he have this exchange:

Tracy: My God, don’t you understand the meaning of what happened here today?

Kelly: What happened here today has no meaning.

Tracy: You have no meaning. You’re like a ghost pointing an empty sleeve and smirking at everything that people feel or want or struggle for. I pity you.

Kelly: You pity me?

Tracy: Isn’t there anything … What touches you? What warms you? Every man has a dream. What do you dream about? What do you need…?

No answer. 

Tracy: You don’t need anything do you? People. Love. An idea just to cling to. You poor slob. You’re all alone. When you go to your grave there won’t be anyone to pull the grass up over your head. Nobody to mourn you. Nobody to give a damn. You’re all alone.

That exchange could be about anything serious that the ironists get hold of; the war in Iraq, terrorism, culture, religion … It’s Spencer Tracy’s character saying to all the Kelly-types: “You’re even worse than those who are wrong, because you are cowards who stand for nothing other than your own sense of superiority.” 

And Maher and Stewart and Letterman are all alone. They believe in nothing but tearing down and mocking and insulting. And they are all alone by choice. They choose no country, no loyalties, no faith, no hope, no optimism, and no boundaries. And like Tracy, I pity them. Because after the joke writers go home and the lights dim and the audience dwindles, they will find they mean nothing and contributed even less. They will look back on a wasted life and be alone left only with their ironic little smirks.

Certainly not everyone on either coast has that ironic detachment shaping their outlook. But the idea that it's a virtue, that absence of passion is somehow superior to passion, well, there I disagree. It's not even pacifism.

Because you see, when you have no passion, the only thing you can be ironic about is passion.

Comedy is pain. It's our empathy that brings us together. Shared passions are what binds us together.

I have friends and I do not know what they would fight for. Or if they would fight. Even to protect their own lives.

When ironic detachment rules, what is left of life?

In a shielded culture safe from harm, that may not be an issue. But we don't live in a shielded culture anymore. Irony is no defense against the True Believer with the ability to force their belief. Eventually you run out of places to blend in.

Maybe I am missing the point. Maybe there is something that they are passionate about. Maybe there is a dream under all that detachment.

Somewhere.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sun - November 5, 2006 at 01:37 PM  Tag


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