Macro-Aggressions
While taking a dump today, I thought about someone I haven’t thought about in years, Andrew “Dice” Clay. You can’t understand the 1980s unless you understand “The Dice Man.” Described as “Fonzie with Tourette’s,” at the height of his career, this comedian packed venues like Madison Square Garden for multiple day runs, something only high-end professional wrestling and cult/religious ceremonies were normally capable of doing. As a symbol for his time, Dice is the Alpha and the Omega. He represents the 1950s esthetic many conservative men harkened back to but blown out into ridiculous extremes, so everybody could be in on the joke. If it’s only a joke, what’s the harm? But under the jokes was an undercurrent of the true 1950s the 80s folks wanted back, and we’re not talking about high paying unions jobs, the world’s best infrastructure, free state college and the taxes levied on the corporations and rich to pay for it. They wanted the bravado, the brash narrative, openly leveled at socialists, gays and women at that time but opened up again for African Americans, Jews, Mexican immigrants and all of the rest lumped into the “other” categories of the 1950s’ heydays. And as the Mexican food from the previous day burned my ass on its way out, I could hear his jokes in my head with each flaming turd hitting the water, but my only laughter was at the thought of my days today working in academia with 20 something kids talking passionately about things like “trigger phrases” and “micro-aggressions” and realize that not only have they never heard about Andrew “Dice” Clay, but they can’t even conjure up an act as malignant as his today; he might as well be Godzilla.
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