Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You by Greg Gutfeld Read Free Book Online Page B

In turn, they leave everyone else alone, until they have the extra resources to help them. They don’t tell you what soda size to drink or how much to recycle. Social consciousness gets in everyone’s business, while their private lives go to hell.” And how that became cool is beyond my comprehension. Remember Gladys Kravitz? The neighbor from
Bewitched
, who was always in Samantha and Darrin’s business? In the seventies that was annoying; in 2013, it’s lauded. She’s “engaged,” she’s “caring,” she’s also, in any era, a total pain in the ass.
    Examples of this type of “Ignore Locally, Annoy Globally” abound, from saps like Jim Carrey to sappier saps like Sean Penn. You know their families dread their presence around the holidays because these thoughtful souls care more about gun control than about self-control. I don’t know this for a fact—about those chaps in particular—but I know it from college years at Berkeley. The more people care about something far, far away, the less they care about their immediate surroundings—or the people they annoy within those surroundings. It’s always the roommate who’s obsessed with saving the orangutans whose personal hygiene is similar to one.
    It’s this kind of cool that harms more people in this world than the risky jerks who race through city avenues, high on stimulants, head to toe in red and black leather. Over the long term, symbolic attempts at appearing cool end up replacing honest charity that actually helps people. In most cases, social consciousness, really, is a simplistic strategy to mask a lazy intellect and fulfill a desperate need for attention. It’s what liberals do when they don’t get talk shows or are in a holding pattern waiting for talk shows. (See
Weiner, Anthony
.)
    And it puts those who disagree with their antics at a disadvantage. How can you be against helping the poor? Or separatingglass bottles from paper trash? How can you not want to save the whales, or adopt a polar bear, or marry a Baldwin?
    You must be a monster if you don’t agree with those causes. And while some of these activities might have some good effects, the persons engaging in such “selfless work” are really doing it for themselves. It’s all about feeding an ego, not feeding a person. As I write this, Ben Affleck is going to live on $1.50 a day to raise awareness of the plight of the starving in Africa. Wouldn’t it be better if he raised awareness as to why so much money raised for Africa rarely makes it to its poor, suffering people? Of course, it would—but that’s not a stunt. That requires real homework, real research, and real knowledge about the nature of Third World corruption and its consequences. And Affleck has enough trouble trying to convince people he’s not a hologram.
    Social consciousness has become a gimmick to excuse reprehensible behavior. In fact, put “social” before any word, and it becomes “important” and “compassionate.” At its worst, social consciousness masks evil—it’s flimflam for the foul, a condemnation condom. Social consciousness won Al Sharpton invites to the White House, despite the cad’s ruining countless lives since his garish orgy of racial exploitation that began with the Tawana Brawley case in 1987.
    How do you know that social consciousness is thoroughly worthless? When it’s so easy that everyone else is doing it. When it’s integrated into sappy TV sitcoms, and when corporations desperate for approval from people who hate them flaunt it on their websites or on Twitter. When superficial and dumb-as-dirt celebs get involved. Social consciousness becomes the dumping ground for reflexive, attention-seeking acts of meaningless symbolism—aphony exercise meant to shroud the shallowness of those employing it. It’s a sham’s best friend. It makes you miss the cool of old: the aimless biker with a nonfilter cig hanging from his lips. Yeah, he smelled bad. But at least he won’t block your