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June
26, 2003
You Are What You Eat
How
to Hate Almost Anybody
By
BEN TRIPP
We live in a political climate that engenders
and encourages fear and hatred of just about everybody. At any
time, our elected representatives are setting up numerous diverse
groups to become targets for general detestation. So many segments
of the population are hated nowadays that it's getting hard to
figure out who's who on the hate parade, so I am taking it upon
myself to clarify this matter. Otherwise, we get people killing
other people because they think they're somebody else, instead
of killing them for being the unique people they really are.
There are three basic types of hate that
can be applied to a people in general: race, religion, and orientation.
This monograph is not intended to deal with personal hatred
of an individual, that being a different kind of hate. If someone
ravished your aunt Francis, or as occasionally happens your uncle
Nigel, you may well hate the perpetrator (obviously this presupposes
you have a healthy relationship with your aunt) for a specific
and demonstrable reason. Saying "I hate that man, he raped
my aunt" at the Gleberman's holiday party is a perfectly
reasonable expression of hate, as these things go, although what
she was doing in that part of town is anybody's guess. The kind
of hate we're dealing with here is the abstract hate of a large
group of 'persons unknown' because they are who they are, as
far as you know.
Race is an easy method for hating people,
when available. But what with all the mingling that has gone
on in the past few centuries, it's easy to get things wrong.
Let's start where everybody starts and talk about colored folks.
If somebody is really, really black, easy enough. But Colin
Powell--what race is he? He's half turnip, at least. Tiger
Woods: Coon or Gook? And if you hate someone because they're
a heathen Chinee and then it turns out they're from Korea, who
looks like a fool?  It's
Chink this and Ching-Chong that and all along you've been hating
a Zipperhead! Race is not a reliable criterion for hating anyone.
After all, there's a Jew or a Spaniard or a dusky Moor in almost
everybody's background somewhere, and if you don't know about
it, it's because Grandma's secret died with her. I recently
found out I was half Zulu--what an eye-opener that was. Now
I have to find a new golf course to join--but at last I know
why my golf partner rubs my head for luck. Thanks, you're a
wonderful audience. So if race doesn't work, what about religion?
Again, the problem is figuring out who's
who. For example, all those broads or bims with dots on their
heads--you can hate them for wearing dots on their heads, but
what's the point? Better to learn they sport the tika or bindi
because they are Hindus. Now you have a handle on something
hateworthy! After all, Hinduism is a religion, and what better
reason to hate someone than the way in which they commune with
the supernatural? Unfortunately, since Gwen Stefani started
dotting her eyes it's become fashionable outside the trekker/bellydancing
set, so the bindi is no longer a reliable indication of anything.
Hindu men are even worse because they often don't wear anything
particularly noteworthy. Some of them sport turbans, but who
doesn't? Sikhs, Muslims, old-fashioned Hindus and chemotherapy
patients all wear some variation on the turban, and many of the
cats actually blowing themselves up on buses lately don't wear
them at all--they wear the keffiyeh, or head scarf, traditionally
held on with a bit of string, or as John Cooksey (the noble Republican
congressman from Louisiana) describes it, "[A] diaper on
his head and a fanbelt wrapped around the diaper" See?
There's hate in action! And as usual, it doesn't work. Because
he was describing the keffiyeh, but talking about Osama bin Laden,
who wears a kind of spiral-wrapped chiffonet. Best to just hate
them all. But that's so damned un-American, or used to be.
Worse, many religions do not require any outward appurtenances
such as turbans, yarmulkes, or hooks through the nipples (Hindus
again, but only on holidays). Apparently many persons of religious
feeling express their faith only through spiritual communion
and modes of living. How queer is that? Clearly, religion even
in combination with race--is not a reliable indicator. That
leaves us, speaking of queer, with orientation.
Orientation is also a piss-poor way of
sorting your enemies out. The Fedex man who comes to your house
is gay, did you know that? I didn't know it either, until I'd
been making out with him for ten minutes and suddenly realized
he knew what he was doing. You can never tell. And by orientation
I don't just mean sexual preference. We're talking gender (you
can hate all women, for example, as many men and Dr. Laura do)
political allegiance (Republican, Democrat, or Disenfranchised)
and lifestyle (no-goodnik artists! Working class bastards!
Bourgeois pigs!) But so many people behave in more or less the
same way, regardless of the way they're wired. Women who act
like men and vice-versa are fairly common, although Jaye Davidson
and RuPaul still turns heads. My best pal is as gay as a goose
and he's far more butch than I'll ever be, and I'm profoundly
heterosexual--I have three women a day (that's on average; sometimes
it's ten women one day and then a week off. The Fedex guy was
a fluke.) I know a long-haired Republican who smokes cheeba
and does crystal therapy and a wild-eyed Marxist who look exactly
like Alan Greenspan. Orientation is useless in the hate department,
because you have to really get to know people to find out whether
to hate them or not, and by that time you like them. So how
are we to hate anybody? I suggest food. Eating habits are a
dead giveaway.
There's been a lot of talk about different
kinds of Muslims. It's probably easiest to just hate them all,
and if that means hating the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens,
so be it. The Muslim eating habits are pretty easy to spot.
All Muslims are supposed to eschew alcohol, or at least not
drink it (not everybody can sneeze on command). They're not
supposed to eat the flesh of swine (this includes all pig products
and anybody from the Senate) or any animal that has died of natural
causes. Basically the Muslims may eat foods which are halal,
which means kosher, or in other words, exactly what their arch-enemies
the Jews eat. It's probably safest to hate both the Jews and
the Muslims, rather than fiddle around trying to figure out if
anybody's drinking Manischevitz instead of grape juice. Certainly
this is the compromise most people make. But at least we have
learned that anybody who won't tuck into a mess of jambon a la
choucroute is either Muslim, Jewish, or vegetarian, and therefore
safely within the categories of people worth hating. Note that
Jews are also not supposed to eat badgers, so if you go to a
badger restaurant in the hopes of hating some Jews you will be
sorely disappointed.
The Sikhs can be spotted in the average
dining situation because they regard kosher and halal meats to
have been slaughtered in an inhumane manner and prefer a vegetarian
diet overall. This is why cows and sheep are vegetarian, although
not all cows and sheep are Sikhs, so maybe hate them also to
be on the safe side. Sikhs may, however, eat some meat, as long
as it's jhatka, meaning killed as fast as possible, preferably
so the head flies across the room. Roadkill is not included
in this definition, which may be why so few Sikhs eat armadillos.
But you can reliably identify and hate a Sikh by the way he
won't eat veal, so go to a veal restaurant and hate anybody who
got the salad as an entrée. Sikh and you shall find.
Hindus, on the other hand, may eat almost any damn thing, which
makes them much like the detestable Belgians. Except Hindus
have one universal proscription, which is beef, whereas Belgians
consume upwards of an entire cow per capita every year. So you
can easily hate Hindus and Belgians separately. Many Hindus
are also vegetarian, and thus can be hated for that alone. Buddhists
are generally supposed to be vegetarians as well, although they
cheat, especially Zen Buddhists who know that there is
no meat. Only the illusion of meat. We're on a roll now. You
can hate Catholics simply by observing who gives up meat for
Lent, or occasionally cream buns, although this minority is already
hated by the other Catholics so it's not worth pursuing. And
of course if you're anything other than Christian, you may identify
and hate Christians simply by observing who favors cheeseburgers
and pork fried rice.
If the party is question is Asian and
therefore possibly not Christian, you can dispense with religion
and simply hate them for having epicanthic folds or using chopsticks.
What could be easier? If you're blind, you can hate black people
by asking them if they'd like a glass of milk. Many persons
of the African persuasion are lactose intolerant and will therefore
politely decline the offer, although many Asians suffer the same
condition, but who cares? They're all worth hating. The surest
method for blind hatred of black people is to shout "All
niggers must hang!" and hate the first person who punches
you in the head. For my sighted readers, remember you can hate
blind people and they won't even know.
Food is even a reliable indicator among
Europeans: you can identify and despise people from the UK because
they hold knife and fork in the wrong hands, the French because
they favor fifteen different kinds of glass at a single place
setting (water, beer, white wine, red wine, etc. and that's just
during the appetizers), and the Swiss because they dip everything
in molten cheese and nibble it on the end of long forks. Australians
and New Zealanders, who are not strictly European but resemble
Europeans in low light conditions, can be identified by their
unusual ability to drink an entire hogshead of beer at a single
swallow. With Germans it's fifty gallons. You see? Ethnicity
and race are easy harbingers of hate if you watch what people
are eating!
Finally, persons can be identified and
hated by orientation through food preferences, as well. Starting
with sexual orientation, homosexual men are forever on the Atkins
diet, as are many straight women, so although this won't help
distinguish them you can safely hate both groups. Anyway, what's
the difference? They all eat cock. Except lesbians, of course,
who can be identified because they don't. Simply demand oral
sex from any woman and if she doesn't agree to it, she's a lesbian.
This traditional diet-based criterion is still effective at
determining why a particular woman should be hated. If you're
a woman, I hardly need to explain why you should hate a man on
dietary grounds; it's not what he eats but how inept he is at
eating it (get it? See, that's a joke about I'll just keep going,
shall I? Or not.)
Beyond carnal matters we have lifestyle
eating modes: you can pretty much hate anybody who is fat, skinny,
on a diet, or not on a diet, because they're all out of control
and disgusting; there are the vulgar drunks who consume alcohol
and the repulsive puritans who do not. Artists subsist on stolen
cheese from their last gallery opening. Working class people
eat whatever they are given, and eat all of it, too; reprehensible,
but not as putrid as the middle class that eats only half of
it because it's fattening, or the impossibly abhorrent upper
classes who eat all of what they are given, and then eat everything
everyone else was supposed to get, too. Political orientation
is also revealed through food: Republicans pay $2,000 a plate
to eat vinyl chicken, while Democrats pretend to like Jim Carville's
barbecue recipes, and most Independents have been reduced to
eating dirt. The Greens are all vegetarian; you can tell who
they are because they look freaked out in burger joints. Anarchists
are easily distinguished because when they go to a burger joint
they pile all the booths in the middle of the floor and set them
on fire.
I think that covers pretty much everybody.
You can figure out who to hate in a reliable fashion simply
by observing what they eat. The only real shortcoming to this
method is the danger that you might be eating something that
indicates you should be hated too, but at this point, jump in
and be hated. At least the food's good. Wait, though--have
I missed someone? The Aleut, who eat walruses and whale blubber?
The Samoans, who apparently eat elephants? What about elephants,
for that matter? In fact I did leave one group of people out,
a very large group, and one worth hating more than all the Dagos,
Bat-Gwais, Spics, Canucks, 9-Irons, Abos, Bazis, Bohunks, Yids,
Eurinals, Pakis, Eggplants, Towelheads, Gyppos, Hatchet-Packers,
Dinks, Nips, Camel-Jockeys and Swedes put together: let us here
note the non-voters, who can eat shit and die.
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter and cartoonist. Ben also has a
lot of outrageously priced crap for sale here. If his
writing starts to grate on your nerves, buy some and maybe he'll
flee to Mexico. If all else fails, he can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
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