“Calling the ‘copth’!” — Welcome To Metrosexual World!
The other night my girlfriend’s and my cab stopped at a crosswalk for two 20-something men. Up next to us roared a BMW, apparently oblivious to the pedestrians, noticing them just in time to slam its breaks and, as if the pedestrians had been doing something wrong, blowing its horn angrily. The Beemer’s passengers, two 40-ish men, began yelling at the crossing trio; apparently incensed that the pedestrians had the audacity to use their right of way and cause them to stop.
The smaller male pedestrian yelled, “It’s a (expletive) crosswalk!” The two 40-somethings in the BMW yelled back louder, flashing the middle finger with accompanying profanities. Then the larger of the two male pedestrians turned and kicked the car’s bumper.
The screams increased. The passenger of the Beemer rolled down his window to heckle the car-kicker, face-to-face, but instead was punched by the same guy in the shoulder. Now it was physical. Through his seat belt the passenger made a louder protest against the car-kicker-turned-attacker — and was punched by him again. We had rolled down our cab’s window by then, hearing the driver cry, “That’s it, we’re calling the cops!” Only, through his effeminate voice, it came out as “we’re calling the ‘copth’!”
The young attacker, visibly intoxicated, punched the passenger yet again. “We’re calling the copth right now!” the Beemer guys shouted, then sped off. Altercation over.
Now although the guy who assaulted them was younger and in better shape, the two BMW guys were not old or out of shape by any stretch –i.e. they could have defended themselves against the wannabe MMA star, and would have been justified doing so. But no; instead, in their dapper button-ups and frazzled bourgeois demeanor, decided to simply call the “copth” and speed away.
Sigh.
Is this what our culture is coming into? Granted, the pedestrians had the right of way, but once the larger guy chose to attack the BMW’s occupants, their right of anything vanished. The men in the car should have defended themselves against the pedestrian’s assault, hands-down. They could have held him down until the copth showed up.
I live in downtown Washington D.C. —Gay, Yuppie, and Metrosexual Central. Ironically, though, there are gays here who work out habitually, making Conan the Barbarian look like Justin Beiber. And had the BMW been occupied by those sorts of gays, I doubt not the “kicker” would have been snapped like a twig. But the Beemer boys were not gay, they were metrosexuals.
Yes, folks, there is such as thing as being “over educated”: the feeling of being well educated and intellectually elite often breaks an inherent strain of masculinity in America 2012. It seems like for many, the more educated one becomes the less masculine they become as well.
It has not always been this way though, so this is not a general knock against higher education. Advanced graduates don’t all wimp-out like those in the Beemer. But a hell of a lot do, and being around these people day in and out, I must confess: I see a distinct, bizarre correlation between being well educated and upper-class and avoiding any sort of altercation, even when warranted.
These white, urban metros avoid confrontation like the plague. Even when passing by you in grocery stores they whimper, “So sorry” — as if the common act of squeezing by another person in a grocery aisle is somehow offensive, causing discomfort, thus altercation.
The Beemer boys were totally at ease cursing the pedestrians through the comfort of their $60,000 ego on wheels. But when push came to shove (literally) and the primordial callings of self defense came knocking, the best they could muster was piteous “We’re calling the copth!” PA-THE-TIC!
And with our culture’s current dogma of “everyone must go to college” I fear that, along with churning out endless hordes of intellectuals (mostly self-imagined), we’re also letting loose upon society people who, viewing themselves as “intellectuals,” believe they must hail decorum at all costs, civility at all expense – even when assaulted by some drunk who needed to restrained, and arrested.
My mother was asthmatic, and when someone would light a cigarette near her she would say, “Excuse me, could you not do that here? I’m asthmatic.” Hence, possible confrontation would incur (gasp!).
But the future yuppies we’re exporting today from graduation stages by the millions are a different strain. No, they won’t confront you openly on your cigarette. What they’ll do instead is give a whiney call to their mayor or councilman, requesting that smoking be banned across the entire city or state. They use politicians to exert the guts they lack, foregoing confrontation in any situation in place of abstract, sweeping decrees that mold their environment into the bland, yuppie Candy Lands they seek to inhabit. For confrontation is for untermenschen, lower classes; toothless ruffians they envision hooting at NASCAR races and demolition derbies, and who no doubt vote R … Re …Republican!
I saw a “progressive” magazine months ago with the cover story “Hipster Nation,” exploring how America is turning from a nation of rural and suburban ball cap-wearing, John Deer-riding stump-jumpers into mainly hip, urban, college elites (not to mention underemployed, if employed at all). But the Beemer boys weren’t hipsters, they were today’s 20-something hipsters all grown up; nutless, neo-bourgeois wimps who wouldn’t even defend themselves against an assault for fear of breaking some contemporary and growing, pointy-headed code of conduct for the upper-class (be one truly upper-class or just thinking he is).
It was as pitiful as it was ominous, indicative of an nation whose future rests in the soft manicured hands of growing throngs of gutless metrosexuals; people ripe for domination and control, be it by a drunken bully in a crosswalk, or a bullying government drunk on power. Either way, to quote from the great Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “I weep for the future.”
