|| I TOTALLY MADE A COTTON BALL BEARD WHEN I WAS LITTLE! ||
cohen@washpost.com
For some reason I cannot stop laughing at the following description of Richard Cohen, the dickwad columnist at the Washington Post, pictured above, who enjoys slut shaming, conjecture, and connecting point A to point Z while pretending point Z is actually point B. From Jezebel.com:
In an effort to defend Miley Cyrus/point out how Richard Cohen is an out-of-touch misogynist who looks like a kindergartner's cotton-ball Santa Claus craft project, (female rapper) Angel Haze wrote the following criticism of Cohen's Tuesday column, "Miley Cyrus, Steubenville and teen culture run amok" Link to Angel Haze's Twitter response to Richard Cohen. Trying to link Miley Cyrus to the Steubenville rapes is absurd.
But seriously, if someone told me I looked like a Kindergartener's Santa Claus cotton ball beard project I have to say I might re-evaluate whether or not I was rockin' my personal aesthetic. I cannot get over my amusement.
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As well at Jezebel.com, there's an article entitled Haters Gonna Hate, But I Try Not To (quick read) that so describes my nature -- a nature I actively try to rebuff -- that I just had to ask ... are any of you like this too? I really don't want for this to be my norm, but, well, it kind of is. This doesn't mean I'm unfriendly, hate people in general, or enjoy others' despair. But I'm slow to warm to new ideas or situations and I have a hard time rolling with the punches. An excerpt:
Do verified haters tend to hate everything else they stumble upon? Yes, according to a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. People who tend to hate things they already know about are (surprise!) more disposed to hate things they have not yet come in contact with.
The author of the Jezebel article, Madeleine Davies, goes on to say:
As I've gotten older, I've fought hard against my natural inclination to hate. Unfortunately, it's harder to like something than it is to dislike it. Liking something means being enthusiastic and being enthusiastic means being vulnerable. People can always trump you with sarcasm or cynicism or by making you feel dumb for loving something honestly. In that way, liking something is actually quite brave and hating on things is terribly cowardly.
But here's the truth. Sometimes I miss being a hater. Like I said before, hating is easy. And some things deserve to be hated on. So how do you find balance and avoid becoming one of the people from the study who hates everything from crossword puzzles to the entire country of Japan? Well, you can use common sense, for one thing. When you have a negative reaction to something, you can check in with yourself and evaluate whether or not the thing you're reacting to is actually loathsome or that you're being a dick just because.
Like, just yesterday I was talking with longtimegone about Orange Is the New Black. Kristen mentioned that this new Netflix original series was on her to-watch list and my immediate response was, "I don't like it at all," which Kristen found slightly surprising. It's gotten rave reviews and is based on a true story of an individual who spent a year in federal prison for carrying some drug money one time. Kristen asked me why I didn't like it (I think she asked anyway ... I might have just offered my unsolicited opinion) and at first all I could say is "It's contrived." Then, after thinking about it for a few minutes, I kind of fell back on my usual complaint with shows that feature law enforcement: they're often grossly inaccurate, portray law enforcement as inept, bumbling, and corrupt, and presented over-the-top criminal offenders. I say this a lot when it comes to law related shows, based on my own experiences as an officer of the court, but here's where my hate is skewed: my experiences as a law enforcement officer are not universal, and if I'm honest with myself, I have to acknowledge pockets of dysfunction even in my own two departments.
I recall one probation officer who was regularly physically aggressive toward his probationers, to the point where he was nicknamed "Tackleberry". In one incident he actually kicked in the door of a probationer's house, tackled the probationer, handcuffed him, and called the police who quickly determined the PO had gotten the wrong house, kicked its door in, and placed a citizen under false arrest. There was that supervisor, yes, who came into work at 10:00 a.m., left at 3:00 p.m., and couldn't begin to suss out legal briefs or motions to the Court, and whose pat line was "I'll get back to you on that" for even the simplest question. One of my work friends was disciplined for going out on a date with a man who had been placed on probation, but hadn't yet begun his sentence, because she failed to disclose this to management once she realized the guy was on probation. A co-worker -- an Intensive Supervision Probation (ISP) office was fired after it was discovered he had gotten one of his female ISP offenders pregnant and then paid her $10,000 in hush money. More officers than I can count were burnt out to the point it would have been better if they would have just retired, to let some new blood into the field who were still filled with the exuberant hope that youth brings. And, yeah, the supervisor for the Sex Offender Unit did indeed have a fuckable blow up sheep with a jingle bell, confiscated from a sex offender, in his office as decor.
I've visited several county jails as well as the state prisons. The weapons collections at these facilities were fucking unbelievable (examples 1, 2, 3 and 4 -- weapons of all kinds, made by, and confiscated from, the prisoners. I've toured the state hospital where prisoners from all around the state were sent for forensic evaluations, and it also houses the criminally insane.
But that's my experience. And I wanted to hate on Orange Is the New Black because I was elevating my experience as a law enforcement officer over the author of Orange Is the New Black's. My auto response was to disdain, and to disdain leads to a closed mind. Although I had planned to continue watching Orange Is the New Black, I think going into it with this realization about my hater mentality will allow for a different viewing experience than I might have had, had I not considered exactly what it was about the show that tripped my hater switch.
I would like to think of myself as open minded, but my natural tendencies do not lend themselves to open mindedness as an inherent trait. I have seen a lot of very different things in my life; however, I don't think that equates open mindedness. I think it's true that I am not often overly surprised by human behavior, but that also is not the same as being open minded. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, though, so my desire and goal to become more open minded and less of a hater I think are compatible.
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