is "stupidity" just another word for entitlement?

Music: Pieter Nooten: Ourspace (2006)

I think this is my first blog post written at 35,000 feet in the air.

Moving through hotels this weekend I have been amused by the media blitz for Carrie Prejean’s new book, Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate, and Political Attacks. Just as I was about to leave the house for Chicago I happened to catch Prejean in an interview with Meredith Vieira on the Today show. Vieira plays the soft and friendly counterpoint to Lauer's more pointed questioning and Curry's ass-kissing, something like the baby bear's porridge of morning pabulum. Prejean was incapable of answering questions that required her to actively think; she only spit-back ready-made scripts about the liberal MSM's double standards. At one point she accused Vieira of asking inappropriate questions and attempted to pick a fight, which was somewhat surprising given Vieira's soft and friendly demeanor (I mean, c'mon---this is the morning talk show person voted most likely to give you bail money). Apparently Prejean has been acting similarly outraged on the talk-show circuit, as I spied another clip of her in the Hilton hotel elevator television feed. This morning I saw that she had a tantrum on Larry King's show, removing her microphone and threatening to leave the set because he was asking inappropriate questions (she didn't actually storm off the stage, though; a self-styled "Professor of Popular Culture" on CNN rightly observed that if you're going to make threats like that, you'll sell more books if you actually follow-through). From the snippets I've heard, Prejean's handlers helped her with a "talking point list" that she memorized, and which goes something like this: (1) talk about the double-standard of the media; (2) defend marriage for straights only (not heteros---there is a difference); (3) discuss censorship by the Miss USA people; (4) redefine the masturbatory sex-tape as "sexting" and confess it was wrong; (5) accuse the interviewer of being inappropriate. Rinse. Repeat.

Of course, Prejean is a very easy target, which led me to dither about whether I should even bother posting this (stay tuned, however). Whenever I saw her speak, all I could think about was Perez Hilton's post-pageant video blog in which he screamed Prejean was booed for her comments about gay marriage, not because of her politics, but because she "is a dumb B*&^5!" I stopped reading Hilton because I think he is mean---downright cruel at times---and when I first heard his rant I thought it was simply unabashed misogyny. I still think he is a hater, however, when watching Prejean all I could think was (er, ok, yes, she's very hot, I won't lie) . . . all I could think about was Hilton's sound bite: "Miss California lost because she's a dumb . . . ." I now sort of think he called it, with an emphasis on "dumb." I'm also rethinking what Hilton said, because if you subtract this dude's own narcissism, he's right: it's not really about gay marriage. The subtext is that she said that because she's remaining consistent to a platform, a network of scripted positions (pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, anti-health care reform, and so on; we can list the issues in our sleep, right?). And the case for stupidity is manifest in other ways. For example: trying to fashion oneself into a role model for conservative young people by selling your body and taking out a loan from a beauty pageant for breast implants isn't really going to work, even if you groom your nether bits in the shape of a cross. (I mean, Hooters is a family boobie bar, but that did work because they're open on Sunday.) It's also simply not smart to accuse the MSM's milquetoast contingent of being unfair and inappropriate. The only thing I can imagine that would be even stupider is to accuse Ellen Degeneres of being hater (and I'd LOVE to see that interview).

Reading reviews of her book, however, I started to feel a teensy guilty about my smug enjoyment of Prejean's confused publicity campaign: she's barely 22. She looks (to me, at least) much older, and her discussions on television also help to create this impression. For example, when responding to questions about a "sex tape" she made for a boyfriend, she noted that was when she was a "kid" and she's grown up now. And how many 22 year olds do you know who have made a sex tape? Right, no fingers left to count on. But what about a memoir? Yeah, I know what you're thinking. So, how many 22 year olds do you know who have had a memoir ghost-written from a stack of notes on ruled "college" paper? None, I would hazard a guess.

I don't know about you (and most of you are closer to my age than Prejean's), but I was un-smart at 22. I was also young and full of . . . dung (to put it truthfully, I'm still pretty much full of it, or at least I'm told so). Knowing her actual age, I think I'm much less critical of how un-smart and dull her media appearances have been. Yes, she's dumb or stupid, but in a more technical sense, not in the sense of some intrinsic or essential deficiency, not in the commonplace sense of "dumb," not in the angered sense that Hilton probably meant it (and, well, I think we could also say Perez Hilton is calling the kettle black).

As soon as I discovered she was 22, I couldn't help but think of a certain form of student behavior I am noticing, a behavior becoming more common (but thankfully, not commonplace). You know this student behavior, longtime readers, as . . . [DUN! DUN! DUNNNNN!] the petulant demand!

The staging: I teach large lecture classes, and one method of evaluation I like is the "pop quiz." I learned this from a mentor as both a way to encourage reading and attendance. Over the course of the semester, I give 10-15 surprise, 5 question, multiple-guess quizzes on the previous evening's readings. My policy is to let students drop three quiz grades, which helps to correct for excused absences, traffic, oversleeping, athletic events, obscure Buddhist holidays, doctors appointments, and other legitimate and not-so-legitimate reasons to skip class. I always give the quizzes at the beginning of class, and late students are often super-bummed and always want to take the quiz late. My policy is not to allow this (and for all sorts of legit reasons). Since coming to Texas, it never fails that at least once a semester a student arrives late to class, demands to be allowed to take the quiz, and then makes a big scene when I say no. For example, recently a student did this, huffed, slammed the door, and so forth (drawing audible gasps from other astonished classmates). After class he came to "apologize." The apology included mention of an injury, others having swing flu, the distance from one class to the next---anything he could think of. When I mentioned that in general it was rude to make a scene like that for an audience of 150 some-odd students, he told me that I was, in fact, the rude one for refusing to let him take the quiz.

It seems to me Prejean's talking-point script and the petulant demand are vehicles for the same affective hormones, if you will. Rhetorically each is very different---the MSM have a liberal bias, teachers who don't let late students take quizzes are rude fascists---but the sense of entitlement is the same at the level of disposition and, quite literally, anality (footnote to Karl Abraham). The cultural catch phrase is, I underscore, "sense of entitlement," which is not about justice, but a certain feeling, or as Nietzsche might put it (footnote to the genealogy of morals here), a certain sense of debt. Whereas the debt Nietzsche describes is masochistic (guilt), however, in the recent evangelical turn the debt is the other's (think, here, of the Bush II administrations "bankruptcy reform" bill, which actually deregulated credit card companies; the moral behind the bill was it was the debtor's fault, their inability to live within their means).

Strictly speaking, entitlement is a formal right to something, like compensation for one's labor. Entitlement hormones, however, are not about rights in the formal sense, but an economics of affect. Feelings of entitlement produce an inherently conservative outlook, which seems homologous, if not identical, to emergent forms of narcissism tied to spectacle and celebrity (I'm thinking here that the desire to be "on camera" is analogous to the desire to make a scene in front of 150 of one's peers at the teacher's expense). The disposition of entitlement is skewed toward the psychotic: others are merely objects in the show of my life, a fantasy played out nicely in The Truman Show; I have little or no understanding of limitation.

The contemporary "sense of entitlement" is autonomy run amok. Now, enlightenment autonomy concerned the entitlement of right, be it natural or political. And I think all of us are entitled to certain basics, such as life, liberty, and . . . affordable healthcare. Righteousness is well served by certain forms of enlightenment autonomy, and I don't dispute this as a political necessity. What troubles me is this postmodern form of entitlement that is an embodied anger toward those who tell you "no."

Prejean and the petulant student are good examples of this postmodern sense of entitlement and autonomy. Prejean feels she has a right to express her opinion in the sense expressed by the oft-heard phrase, "well, that's my opinion and I have a right to express it," or, "well, that's my opinion and you can take it or leave it." The petulant student feels he has a right to demand special treatment because he has worked so hard, because he is a good person (and for the teachers out there: how many times has a student tried to "argue" he or she feels entitled to X, not that he or she thinks X is warranted because of Y?). Prejean's entire publicity premise is that she has been ridiculed for expressing her opinions (regardless of what they are). What's missing from this reasoning is, of course, the critical faculty of judgment and this crazy thing Persig terms "value": not all opinions are worth listening to, and not all effort is worth reward. And let's face it: it's not so clear that Prejean's opinions are even her "own" in the sense that she cannot articulate her scripts---leading to contradictions and the ecstasies of Gotcha Culture© (I've copyrighted that phrase, thank you; I'm entitled to a citation if you use it).

What we have in the sense of contemporary entitlement is a sense of feeling, an embodied feeling, an anality (think of tensing-up, of squeezing yourself closed and hunching-inward, fists shaking), a disposition that, arguably, is rooted in deep, infantile demands. Now, I'm not saying Prejean or the petulant student are infantile and I'm therefore better. I have those feelings too---we all do (I mean, the guy sitting next to me in the airplane is hogging the armrest and his elbow is in my seat-space; I'm fantasizing about ripping his arm off and beating his head with it, his glasses askew and cracked across his face . . . ). We all have these feelings and fantasies, and it used to be the case that fictional entertainment provided us an "escape" with which to "feel them out," so to speak. This contained infantalism has become "reality" ("reality television," anyone?). In our contemporary environment, it would seem that the entitlement-of-right has transformed into an affective conviction that masquerades as an entitlement of right: "You" or "They owe me X" because "I'm a good person" doesn't really even work here. It's a feeling, born in infantile omnipotence that is beyond reason. For example, there's nothing I could say to the petulant student that would ever right the wrong my "no" has done to him. Once, I asked one of these students, "what would you like me to do?" He responded, "well, I'd like you to let me take the quiz."

"But it's a pop quiz, and we've already gone over the answers in class." I said. Why don't you just let this be one of the three quizzes we dropped? It's reasons like this that I've created the 'drop-three' policy, in fact."

Instead of responding to my statement, the student stormed out of the auditorium without responding. Now, how different is this from how Prejean has handled her interviews: when the prepared scripts of her talking-point memo don't work, she refuses to engage, but rather, accuses interviewers of asking inappropriate questions:

Settlements do not preclude answering King's questions, of course. Vocal tone and facial gestures betray the brand of righteousness that replaces good reasons with conviction. It used to be the case that "love is all you need." Now it's just conviction.

Well, it appears my airplane is on it's decent into Austin---we're only 100 miles away---so I should work on wrapping this up. Let's do so with a recap and a question. So far I've been reflecting on my amusement with Carrie Prejean's publicity campaign for her new book, which I've suggested reveals a certain inability to think on one's feet; the contradictions commentators (well, all of us) are pouncing on reveal a very scripted Prejean who is incapable of reconciling competing scripts. My first conclusion was that Prejean was simply not very smart, but when confronted with her young age I noted some similarities to the unreasonable, affective demands of students. It then occurred to me that if we think about stupidity structurally (a la Avital), there's a connection between contemporary notions of affective entitlement and what folks recognize as "stupid." So, the question: is stupidity simply another name for affective entitlement? If stupidity means "lacking intelligence or common sense," then stupidity is not simply lacking the conceptual repertoire to express oneself, low "cognitive complexity," and so on, but also the absence of a common sensibility. In other words, "lacking common sense" means that one does not have a group-minded disposition, an understanding of "right" as a tacit contract to behave in a certain public in a particular way. Prejean's interaction with her interviewers this week is a great illustration: the interviewers she's selected are known for being particularly warm and friendly, very "other-oriented." King is especially renowned for his disarming demeanor. Yet even with these people, she cannot seem to play the game of give-and-take. It's all take. It's all entitlement. It's a fundamental inability to negotiate difference; she can only interact with "same," that is, with herself.

I'm starting to think that if we understand psychosis properly as a psychical structure or disposition (orientation, tendency, habit, whatever) that has not opened fully to the social (for your Lacan-heads out there, I'm thinking about the failure to admit of the paternal metaphor), then Prejean is yet another example of an obsessional neurotic (that is, classic narcissist a la Tom Cruise or Christian Bale) become celebrity. If this is the case, one would expect that Prejean has come from a broken home. And lo and behold, I just found this. More father trouble, indeed.

Psychosis. Stupidity. Narcissism. Entitlement. These are all intimately related. I'm sensing a new academic project, and I think it has everything to do with social movements. Righteousness is a problem in Gotcha Culture. If modernity was neurotic, postmodernity is psychotic. Thinking aloud. Thinking thinking. My tray table must be returned to its upright position. Closing. Computer. Now.