Makes an Important Point in an Over-the-Top Way | Bad Or, the Dumbing of America

Elitist . . . not a bad word today | Bad Or, the Dumbing of America | Paul Fussell

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	• Bad Or, the Dumbing of America Paul Fussell Touchstone Books, 1992 - 201 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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Almost as Funny as Class

Paul Fussell is so sarcastic and fabulous that I want to adopt him. His other book, Class, is the best book of all time for people with "enquiring minds". However, I started to feel silly carrying the same worn book to places where I was held captive: airplaines, hair salons, other people's cars, etc., so I bought the book, BAD. It is clearly an addendum to Class, and it makes me laugh out loud almost as much. NO ONE SHOULD CONSIDER THEMSELVES A TRUE AMERICAN, until they understand both Class and BAD! (Dear Mr. Fussell, please write much, much more before you go to that Great Editor in the Sky. We have current problems which need addressing!)

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Makes an Important Point in an Over-the-Top Way

BAD, acordding to Fussell, is something "boring, stupid, or inane" that can be made to look "fascinating, smart, or deep", such as, for instance, "Playboy" magazine. "Regular" skin magazines are merely bad; "Playboy" pretends to be a quality magazine, therefore it is BAD. Ice cream bars are bad (i.e., low-quality) food; "gourmet" restuarants which most of the food actually arrives frozen and is merely heated and dressed up in the kitchen, and then served on half-empty enormous plates, is BAD. Fussell lists numerous examples of BAD, some amusing ("quality" airline food), some more serious (George Bush [Sr.], Laurence Welk), some absurd (apparently, Fussell considers all music since Mozart--including Brahms, Verdi, etc.--to be BAD music.)

Fussell doesn't mind the merely bad; what bothers him is that what passed for *good* culture in the USA, the ideal to be aspired to, is not the really good, but the BAD. For example, when you stop reading the tabloids and start reading the "Wall Street Journal", you are not moving from bad to good. You're just moving from the bad to the BAD: the Wall Street Journal *pretends* it will make you "educated" about the market, but in reality knows no more about what will happen next than the tabloids do. The real reason for buying the "Wall Street Journal"--like that of most BAD products--is to make the buyer *LOOK* intelligent, well-informed, "knowledgeable" about art, without actually *BEING* so.

Quite true; but Fussell overstates his case. His thesis is that the existence of BAD "proving" the cultural decline of America. Unproven, in my view; that BAD behavior and taste (as well as bad behavior) was always more popular than good behavior and taste was already well-known to Plato. But one can ignore the general the-country-is-going-down-the-tubes thesis, and instead enjoy Fussell's acid wit and amusing, if somewhat scary, examples.

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Elitist . . . not a bad word today

I've come to think that Fussell may well be right on all counts. Since when is elitist a bad thing? If you're ill, don't you want an elite physician? If you're trusting your money management to someone, don't you want them to be elite; the very best at what they do? How about the people teaching your children? Do you care of they're elite at what they do? No? Stop reading.

Listening to the crying children disguised as adults puling about how horribly elitist those who hold a differing opinion or insist on a higher standard must be, I've got to believe we've now hit the bottom of what Neil Postman predicted in "Entertaining Ourselves to Death." That is, the end of public discourse based upon informed and skeptical thinking. It is now nothing more than opinion, bad information (although BAD information seems to be leaking in daily), and what seems to be, as Fussell mentions "complete ignorance of the laws of cause and effect."

Teach your kids to think. Send them to an elite school. That way they need not be the fools led by the knaves. They can scare the knaves.

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Bad. is Good!

Author Fussell put together an excellent rundown of all things he considers "BAD" in the country. Importantly, he distinguishes between the "bad" and the "BAD." A horrendous joke might be a bad one, probably just an opinion and can be overlooked. It's not what he's getting at. However, a horrendous joke dressed up and hyped like it's the greatest joke ever, said to be designed to be funny enough to cure hangovers, is the BAD of this book.

The overstated, the unfounded -like a restaurant that flaunts the vacant word "gourmet" all over the menu is Fussell's kind of BAD. -Not opinion, just check the observable facts and see if they measure up. -Like a newspaper that's technically all-show but definitely weak in the center is BAD. -Like a hyped collectable that's monetarily "valuable" only in the pockets of the seller is BAD.

He covers BAD everywhere: hotels, airports, airlines, television, people, signs, movies, language, ideas, banks, behavior, and on...in a way that all seems quite acceptable...and interesting. I, for one, have never thought of "BAD" things this way before. We've all had negative reactions/ feelings to dopey public sculpture, incredulous advertising, and overly syrupy waiters and waitresses. Fussell tags them BAD and carefully explains why he thinks it's so.

Unfortunately, the author's words sometimes fall all over themselves in many explanations that seem labored and overly cumbersome. -But when he loses the complexity, he gets his point across...seemingly saying a return to basics just might be in order. He offers some solutions to cure the Awful that abounds and claims BAD "won't flourish in the face of knowledge and courage." He suggests, specifically, making B (not C) the average again, teaching a generation to sneer at advertising, and speaking and writing English with some taste, among many other "solutions." --But, he concedes, we may be already too far gone.

It's an enjoyable read -if the reader doesn't get all serious and offended about the premise. It's relevant today, even though the clever book was written years ago. To sum it all up in one, single positive word...as they used to say in the "hip" 70's and 80s, this book is "Bad"!

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With characteristic wit, Fussell zeroes in on the decline of good taste in America. Bad is a hilarious look at how Americans can be persuaded that almost anything that's bad is good. With hints on how to recognize just what's BAD these days, Fussell provides an amusing and illuminating look at the current state of taste in America.

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