Letters to the Editor
tomreedtoon
Published Letters: 805 Editor's Choice: 81
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Which concentration camp is the nicest?
[Read the article: Geek love]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's Zacharek's apparent mission in this article; find which reality show has the least pointy barbed wire, the lowest-voltage cattle prods, the nicest insane doctors killing their patients. I suppose it was inevitable; reality shows are so cheap to produce and contain so much of the cruelty the American public desires that they've become a permanent genre.
This is not a criticism of Zacharek, by the way; I wish she would become the regular television columnist instead of the cappucino-drinking egotist Havrilesky, who needs an assistant to help her spell-check words like "reality." It's just that in trying to decide if Buchemwald or Bergen-Belsen is nicer, a choice more or less forced by the preponderance of these shows, she picked the one that has my class of people as inmates.
We nerds know full well what "no name given" said, about economics, is only part of the truth. (By the way, fellow, get a name and post under it; anonymity is cowardice.) We may or may not have the potential to make money, but even if we did gain it, we would know that attractive women would only like us for that money. Which would make us pimps and them whores, a relationship in which love is irrelevant.
We also know that we will never "change" enough to be able to fake social skills or interest in brands of moisturizers to pass for white - I mean cool. Those factors are determined between the womb and age seven. Those lucky enough to get the right lessons go to Hollywood and live there comfortably. The rest of us work in tech support, with no hope of retirement, until a heart attack brings us sweet relief. And anyone who tries to pass for white...well, Anna Nicole Smith tried, and see what happened to her? (It was suicide, in case you didn't know, with the death of her son, like Monroe's own lost baby, as a strong depressing emotional trigger. Although just like Monroe, there will be conspiracy theories and rationalizations galore.)
In terms of character and socialization, you can't win and you can't break even; you can only get out of the game. And Beauty and the Geek makes the only rational choice, getting the hell out, failure. It'd be hard to find a better definition of a concentration camp.
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You want a replacement for the name "geek?"
[Read the article: Geek love]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While eliminating the scatological ones, which cuts down the list considerably, how about "loser," "failure," "drip," "weiner," "RE-tard," "scumbag," "drooler," "spazz," "jerk," "lame-o," "mouth breather," "asthematic," "four-eyes," "smelly," "stinky," or "slug"?
These are typical names used to replace "geek." Hearing them enough, we call ourselves that, too. You think any of them would sound better in the show title?
And to the person who complained about my use of "white" and said it's racism, well, the kind of prejudice we suffer is far worse than racism on several counts. Nobody stands up for geeks. The best we can hope for is that, if a non-geek girl comes upon our broken and bleeding bodies after the jocks have a bit of "fun" with us, they might show an expression of compassion before they run away. If you don't think this happens in real life, in high schools everywhere, you're self-delusional or unobservant.
Second, at least people who are the victims of race prejudice can share a mutual oppression. Geeks, because we have no social skills at all, can't commiserate with other geeks, or even find them sometimes, and so our suffering is always individual.
And finally (for now) to take a particularly appropriate example, black people could promote the notion that they were equal to whites, and point out the particular benefits of being part of black culture. Even if we geeks could get up the courage to say that, how would you react if we stood up and stated, "We're proud that we can't communicate, that we're considered offensive, and that we're easy to punch, humilate and sometimes even kill." Yeah, they'll name a holiday after that. Maybe Weasel Stomping Day.
And some of you girls want to proclaim yourselves geeks? We may be hopeless, but you're masochistic.
This last part may be a little too dark for some of you, and it is something which is not to be recommended. Heck, nearly all geeks lack the capacity or desire to do it. But when two boys made a certain Colorado high school famous for an occasion where geeks effectively fought back, even though it horrified the rest of you, inside us geeks there was a little quiet voice saying "Good. About time."