Why are writers all so ugly?

Simon

Simon:

It’s true, most writers are pretty ugly.

They were just born that way, and no matter how their parents dressed them, they remained ugly.

A consequence of this ugliness is that they were almost always excluded as children, forced to watch from the sidelines as their more attractive peers lived their happy, little lives. It’s unlikely that any of their glittering peers were mocked, called “Grosslord” and then turned away from the Manor Park Mayfair Kissing Booth, amidst a cacophony of kids pretending to barf, even though the Grosslord in question, who yes, needed dental work at the time, had the money, just like everybody else, that it cost to get a peck from grade eight goddess Mary Appelton. Injustice makes a writer, and ugliness is a great injustice. So the writer, by circumstance rather than by instinct, becomes an observer, hovering darkly on the periphery, always plotting, plotting, plotting, always devising schemes of seduction, conquest and personal elevation, all of which, of course, are doomed to fail.

It’s why so many writers are alcoholic as well as being ugly.

Eventually, the writer will become destitute and bitter, unable to do much beyond engage in Twitter wars about Canadian poetry.

However, I would be remiss if I were to say that all writers are ugly, for this is not true. Tyra Banks, the author of Modelland, is world-renowned beauty.

And of course, Samuel Beckett: 

Dear Bitter Writer:

Like most people, I was disgusted and heartbroken when I heard about the mass murder in Orlando. I wrote down some of my feelings on the matter, and I was wondering if you could tell me where the best place might be to publish my Think Piece? I was considering Medium, any advice?

Brad

Brad:

The best advice I can give you is to never, ever publish anything that is referred to as a Think Piece. Think Pieces are the equivalent of drunken phone messages left for an Ex. Lost, wandering and self-absorbed, they exist only to make the author look enlightened rather than to actually share some sort of enlightenment. Truth be told, I can’t read the words Think Piece without wanting to punch whomever coined the phrase in the face. It sounds remdial, like something you’d do in kindergarten.

“And what’s this a drawing of, Bobby?”

“It Think Piece.”

“Well, it’s lovely, I like what you’ve done with the raging green!”

So no, Brad, just no.

Don’t do it.

And Brad, if you’re straight, that cry of no becomes even louder. I don’t care if you’d fuck Tom Hardy

and are a true ally of the LGBT community, the world still doesn’t need another straight voice added to the storm of voices attempting to deconstruct the shooting. Whether you think people from the LGBT community were specifically targeted or not doesn’t matter. The LGBT community is one that has always been subject to violence, hatred and bigotry, and this, the largest mass shooting in America’s rich history, conducted at a specifically gay venue, suggests that those directly within the community might have a deeper understanding of what the shooting “means,” so I suggest that all straight voices just park it for a little, and listen rather than tell. Just switch your profile pic to rainbow and call it a day, okay?

All day the radio had been warning of this windstorm and the perils it was bringing to civilization, so amidst the sirens in the distance and falling hydro wires, it was easy enough to think that a new and apocalyptic age was being ushered in. Encouraging these feelings of dread was the fact that the grand jury announcement on the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, was to be announced in just a few hours.

(Paul McCulloch, father of Robert)

In a defensive, almost combative tone, St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch (His father was a police officer who was alleged to have been killed by a black suspect when McCulloch was 12-years-old) spoke for nearly 45 minutes, casting aspersions on social media, journalists and Ferguson residents in announcing that officer Darren Wilson would not be charged in the death of Michael Brown.

Nobody was surprised.

This hotly anticipated announcement took place at 9 pm, as if engineered to encourage riots and rebellious protests throughout the night, rather than minimize them. The state was well prepared, of course, and the predictable happened.

It seems that the laws are set-up very specifically to protect police officers from being charged with a crime while in the process of discharging their constabulary duties. This doesn’t feel right. If anything, those wielding power must be held accountable to a higher standard, not freed from one. It is obvious that it’s easier for somebody in power, especially institutional power, to lie and protect that lie, than it is for somebody without power to do so, and if a police officer, with the entire might and authority of his department behind him, kills a teen who does not have a gun,  firing 12 shots that hit him 7 times, then an indictment is essential, if only for the general good of a grieving and shocked community.

It’s widely believed that in America individual rights trump all, that Darren Wilson’s right to protect himself was more important than a community’s right to have the way in which he protected himself tried.

But it often feels like individual rights, the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are merely symbolic, if not smoke and mirrors. It’s the mask America wears, and not the heart beating in the chest.  America seems more interested in protecting private property and capital than it does in the individual rights of people, and nobody lives this reality more painfully and vividly than the African-American community. White fear, a terror that things will be taken from them, has made blacks– who were once property on this soil–an implicit threat, a deadly, almost mystical weapon in and of themselves, that must be dehumanized and controlled, but never truly accepted.