The Self-Hating Bourgeoisie

Patton Oswalt had a minor kerfluffle on Twitter late last week when he quoted Steve Sailer's, "Political correctness is a war on noticing." Twitter social justice warriors who follow Oswalt know that Sailer is a verboten writer and hoped to shame Oswalt by pointing this out.

I was surprised even to see the quote. Oswalt has always struck me as the leading comedian who is brave enough to say that others are racists. You know, real "speaking truth to power" stuff. But a few of Sailer's commenters reminded me that Oswalt has a relationship with Jim Goad, even if they are often at loggerheads.

I like to beat up on stand-up comics because their job requires them to stand, all alone, with a microphone and reveal their assumptions--but mainly because it's an entertainment form I used to love. I hate seeing it radicalized. I've never stopped paying attention to Oswalt even as his material got closer to the New Atheist attitude:  "Religious people are dumb. I'm smart. We're smart, right, folks?"

But Oswalt isn't dumb as much as he's typical of the enlightened left:  he's a self-hating bourgeoisie.

Another comment on Sailer's post pointed out that Oswalt's from a middle-class (if not higher) suburb in Virginia. His hometown figured in some of his earlier work. It's easy to imagine him cultivating his misery back in high school, surrounded by people who weren't as smart as he is.

I think a lot of the Kool-Aid-drinking progressives are this way. They grew up surrounded by people of the same class who they hated.

But here's the thing:  That disgust is usually aesthetic--merely a matter of passions. Oswalt's a little older than I am and is a devotee of comic books and science fiction. Back then, being a "nerd" wasn't cool so he probably got a lot of grief.

People like Oswalt and, for a time, myself, outgrew Knight Rider and discovered David Lynch and John Waters. We discovered David Bowie and the Dead Kennedys. We saw a whole new groovy world outside of our middle-class neighborhoods, a world that offered a lot more of everything we were excited about. Everyone around us was now hopelessly square and so we rejected everything about them.

One of the reasons I didn't abandon Oswalt is a bit called "The World's Most Amazing Father." In it, he says that he's going to be the most boring, conformist father he can be in order to make sure his kids will rebel and be cool. What I liked is his description of "cool" parents and what an uncertain, unstable life they create for their kids. He's not blind; thus his appreciation for Sailer's quote.

Once I escaped my small town, I couldn't help noticing a lot myself. I was in search of people who thought like me, who were looking for alternatives to traditional life.

I found the artsy, cool kids and eventually became disgusted. They weren't exploring a modern lifestyle--they were simply indulging themselves and behaving as if they were enlightened. They bounced from minor disaster to minor disaster (and there was always someone in the wider circle experiencing a major disaster). They were more people who had taught themselves sociopathy than people who had outgrown their middle-class values.

By contrast, the firmly middle-class kids I knew did drugs and screwed around as much as the hipsters but at least they had the feeling that all that fun wasn't making them all that happy. They always pictured themselves giving it all up someday and settling down. They were thinking about what they were doing.