UniBrow

Rule No. 28:

If anyone come to speak to you while you are sitting, stand up, though he be your inferior; and when you present seats, let it be to everyone according to his degree.

Rule No. 27:

Tis ill manners to bid one more eminent than yourself be covered as well as not to do it to whom it’s due; likewise, he that makes too much haste to put on his hat does not well, yet he ought to put it on at the first, or at most the second time of being asked. Now what is herein spoken, of qualification in behavior in saluting, ought to be observed in taking of place, and sitting down for ceremonies without bounds is troublesome.

Seen today on a marquee sign out in front of a nearby metalworks plant: 

If you want to lead people, stand behind them.

And kick their asses!

I had been getting self-conscious about all the Jane Smiley posts. Is it too much? Should I stop? You know. So I recently took about a dozen of my most trusted lieutenants away from the UniBrow campus and into a rustic setting–one with nicely appointed meeting rooms, suitable videoconferencing facilities, and a crack dry-cleaning service–that we might give the matter full consideration over a two-day retreat. We crunched the numbers, we analyzed the trends, we worked up projections–but we also brainstormed, blue-skyed, role-played. We profited from a mind-stretching talk by Malcolm Gladwell, after which I saluted our guest speaker not less for his upbeat surname than for his illuminating perspectives. Rank (all except mine) was checked at the door. We learned that breakdowns can lead to breakthroughs, and just about always do if you ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT TOLERATE SISSY-BOY BREAKDOWNS. Ownership was taken. We were fiercely honest. And we developed key learnings, baby. My epiphany came during the trust exercises. I didn’t actually participate in them myself (get serious). But watching my lickspittle senior staff catching each other’s backwards free falls in the blaze of noon on Day One, I was moved to consider: Isn’t this about trust? Isn’t Jane going to extraordinary lengths–just read this article about her letter-a-day hemorrhaging on the editors of The New York Times–to ensure that no living person need be shut out of her stream of consciousness for ten seconds together? Isn’t she putting herself in our hands, closing her eyes and falling backwards? And aren’t we obliged to catch her? Goddam right we are. We came back from the retreat with revised Mission and Vision statements, an iron resolve to continue elucidating Jane’s teachings, and the happy decision to grant her a pasture of her own here at UniBrow. Click on her name over there at the right, and the whole history of UniBrow’s Jane Smiley commentary forms up for inspection. It’s never been easier to stay plugged in to Jane! 

Jane is of interest to us only as a symptom of a larger problem, actually. She’s the kind of liberal that people who don’t like liberals think of when they feel like luxuriating in their dislike of liberals. She’s an illiberal liberal. She’s a bigot. Anyway that’s what I call anyone who brands whole classes of people as moral inferiors (if not bloodthirsty savages) for reasons that are trivial or, to say the most for them, inconclusive–painfully, ragingly inconclusive. We’ve already had the chance, thanks to her Huffington Post article from June, to take Jane’s measure on the subject of “hate-filled and indecent” Americans. And here, in a tirade that appeared just after the last presidential election, we find Jane engaged upon the same theme. The article’s subhead, ”The unteachable ignorance of the red states,” clues you in to her estimation of the mental darkness and moral degeneracy of anyone who voted for W.–as though every vote for Bush amounted to an unreserved affirmation made in a vacuum and not a choice between The Decider and just one other candidate in an election administered by the Yale Skull and Bones Society; as though there’s no difference between the person who considers W. the greatest president ever and the one who, in 2004, simply judged him the lesser embarrassment of two lackluster alternatives.

But this election season Jane will be out there, as one of the founders of LitPAC, placing her draconian verdicts, her invincible smugness, and her blindness to nuance at the service of liberal candidates. They should be trembling at the prospect. What they should do, actually, if bigotry is still frowned upon in liberal counsels, or if anyone to the left of center doesn’t think execrating half the nation is a prescription for success at the polls, is refuse all association with her. It certainly couldn’t hurt, and her support cannot possibly help.

I will examine her 2004 Slate piece in more detail soon. I’m in too light a mood to do it now. I should also mention–because, after all, Jane isn’t just a logorrheic political activist/pundit; she’s also the corporate human resources manager of American literature–that I have located online the full text of her 1996 apology for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which I believe I described in a previous post as one of the most fatuous pieces of writing on literature that I’ve ever read. I’ll say more about it in the coming days.

Slate confirms that Pynchon wrote the Amazon.com description of his forthcoming novel, and explains its appearance, disappearance, and reappearance.

Rule No. 26:

In pulling off your hat to persons of distinction, as noblemen, justices, churchmen, &c, make a reverence, bowing more or less according to the custom of the better bred and quality of the person. Among your equals, expect not always that they should begin with you first, but to pull off your hat when there is no need is affectation; in the matter of saluting and resaluting in words, keep to the most usual custom.