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Wednesday, January 27, 1999 By Samantha Bennett
I'm not going to write about the impeachment thing per se, so please do stay with me. Mary Worth can wait. I just mention our acrimonious little national peep show because I think it is a symptom of the end of civilization.
Or at least the end of the millennium. Whether you're the sort of ignorant dolt who thinks the new millennium begins Jan. 1, 2000, or the sort of insufferable pedant who insists it begins Jan. 1, 2001 (personally, it begins for me May 20, 2006), there's no doubt we're in the Last Days here. And that means we get to ascribe everything that happens to dire, powerful historical forces. When I say "we," I particularly mean "the media" - official stable boys and girls to the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
I wouldn't be worth much as a columnist if I hadn't identified some disturbing millennial trend. Admittedly, it's not as hip as the Y2K bug - which I don't find all that compelling as an impending doom anyway. Hey, some people say Y2K, and I say why not.
When I look out there in the big world, I see this: polarization. Think about it. Everything now is a fight, with two - and only two - opposing views, no compromise and no common ground. We solve our problems by suing each other. Or shooting. We're politically polarized into Shi'ite conservatives and amoral liberals. In the news media, we feel we have to frame everything as a threat, a contest, a bitter conflict, a winner-or-loser take all. Why? Well, readers and viewers, your lips say no no no, but your eyes and wallets say yes yes yes. We have the stats to prove it. The voice of reason puts you to sleep.
Look around you. Racism. Rudeness. Road rage. Talk shows.
As a copy editor, I sometimes have to read over the daily talk show listing on the TV page. This, more than anything else in our antagonistic culture, has "straight to hell" written all over it. In crayon.
These wildly popular shows are the equivalent of picking off scabs - with an audience. Pain is entertaining! Fistfights are fun! I can't stand to watch, wuss that I am, because I think humiliation is something to be shared only with your nearest and dearest.
A recurrent theme on these shows is love. Cheating lovers. Lovers about to be dumped meet their replacements. Love is a beautiful, many-splendored and uniquely painful thing, and anyone who enjoys watching ignorant blocks of scrapple yell at each other and weep over it would also tune in to championship eyelid-pulling.
If it's staged, does that make it any better?
The sexes have, I think, collectively reached a low point of cooperation and a high point of skulduggery. Dating has degenerated into a nebulous process of widening or narrowing one's circle of friends, sending out the least committal e-mail possible and taking two weight-lifting and three spinning classes a week to put a potentially treacherous sex drive safely in park. As a single person, I am depressed to witness the tedious cat-and-mouse-and-mountain-bike games that males and females inflict on each other. Probably because I am not very good at them.
There has always been a certain tension, a certain chronic level of frustration between the sexes. But as long as we're using company computers to post our résumés on the Internet, suing our neighbors and shooting people whose beliefs irritate us, why not step up psychological operations against those of the other gender? Why try to understand or communicate with them when you can just read a paperback dossier on their weaknesses and exploit them to get your way?
Even when courtship seems to take a charming, conservative step backward, it is only to prepare a kick. My favorite little tulle suppository - for men and women - is "The Rules," a book of "Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right" that came out a few years ago to much media hoopla. This is a book that tells women how to extort a diamond out of a man: Never go dutch, call him, or accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday. Also, grow your hair and don't be funny.
"You may feel that you won't be able to be yourself," the authors chirp, "but men will love it!" The only thing that appalls me more than the self-immolation and manipulation of this stratagem is the suspicion that it probably works.
The end is near. We may not be wiped out, but we may be forced to live ruthlessly ever after. You got a problem with that?
Samantha Bennett can be reached by e-mail at sbennett@post-gazette.com.
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