Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You by Greg Gutfeld Page A

this cool adaptation “the Dionysian trap for young black men.” But I might add that it’s a trap for
all
men. It just hurts black men more because they’re afforded fewer options for escape when it doesn’t go well. A typical white kid can stop acting cool, and do something else, because he has the options to do it. And both end up working for the Asian kid who dropped the pose first.
    And so cool culture has enlisted a generation of young men who need that decaying culture the least. It’s a quickie feel-good antidote to a longer, harder path toward pride and self-respect; it cuts them off from the dedicated work that results in long-lasting achievement. Worse, it’s so damn attractive that its destructive nature is clouded over by its appeal. And let’s face it: It’s fun. How do you fight that? Only one way—stigmatize it.
    Because cool, for everyone, is a bad thing. It’s a value-removal machine, a champion of reverse achievement. But, judging from recent history, for kids enduring the hell of inner cities, cool is worse. It’s another version of crack. Offering immediate appeal and pleasure, it is a gateway drug to nowhere, a one-way ticket to the fruitless decades that follow. This is true not just for blacks but for everyone. What of white kids who start wearing their pants low and then end up having to drop their pants for
real
in prison? Every day I pray for the return of the belt.
    We’ve come to a point where teens mock avenues that lead to achievement while they pursue roads to ruin. Evil finds the path of least resistance, and that path is almost always labeled “cool.” Cool encourages the abandonment of effort that wins respect, degrees, and jobs. Cool allows evil in all its shapes and forms to take you to places you never thought you’d go. Or would want togo. If life offered mulligans, I’d bet every single person who opted for “cool” as a teen would jump at the chance to opt out of the lifestyle that swallowed a decade of their life, or more.
    I wonder where the hell my old friend James is now. Unfortunately, statistics say that it’s six times more likely that he’ll be in prison than I will. That ain’t cool.

KILLER COOL
    If you’re looking for the worst person in the room, find the guy wearing the “Free Mumia” button, as a show of support for a cop killer. Odds are he never wears that piece of flair around cops. That sort of brave political stand is better suited to a Bad Religion concert than a funeral for a fallen officer.
    When I wrote this book, a homicidal maniac named Christopher Dorner was on the loose, somewhere in the mountains of Southern California. The former LA cop, Navy reservist, and murderer who was charged with killing three police officers and leaving three others wounded, posted a rambling “manifesto” elaborating on his murderous plans of revenge against a society that shortchanged him, a manifesto that also contained rantings about his favorite news personalities, politicians, and musicians. (I mean, couldn’t he have just started a blog?) So, what do you do when a cop killer is also a cop? If you’re a prick, you root for him!
    I read his manifesto, fourteen pages that re-created the experience of sitting next to a caffeinated goofball on a bus who just saw an Oliver Stone movie for the first time (which is not muchdifferent from sitting next to Oliver Stone, actually). The diary was at times coherent, other times bitter, and the sum total of the mess was an angry guy with a score to settle, and perhaps suffering from an undefined mental illness. Sort of like an MSNBC anchor. In fact, exactly like an MSNBC anchor.
    Nearly all of the asides in his screed, with few exceptions, were about news personalities. He adores Piers Morgan, making him the only person on the planet who adores Piers Morgan (aside from Piers Morgan). From his writing, it appeared that this nutcase had been stuck in a local airport where the televisions are all tuned in to CNN. I