Review
Stuart Whatley
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
chapters return a profit tracing the historical evolution of the
word’s meaning. WWII soldiers coined it. It took to literature
in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, then was adopted by the counter-culture of the 60s, by country singers
like Willie Nelson and David Allan Coe, by the feminist movement, and so forth. This signifies an unprecedented occurrence: an obscenity emerging from traditionally “low society”
to be used by all classes. Never was a word that you’re not
supposed to say naturalized in
such a way. This is the discussion, fascinating on its own,
NEVER WAS A
that leads him to his grand theWORD THAT YOU’RE
ory of assholism today.
NOT SUPPOSED
But, ultimately, what’s most
interesting isn’t that “assTO SAY NATURALIZED
holism” might encapsulate
IN SUCH A WAY.
early 21st century life. It’s that
we as a culture would need
such a word in the first place.
What void did it fill in our shared consciousness, our exchange of ideas? Perhaps the answer lies with George Orwell, who, in the same decade that asshole began its ascent,
lamented the bleeding of all meaning from words of former
force and import. “The word Fascism has now no meaning
except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable,’”
Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language,” also
listing “democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic,
justice.” These terms, still constantly bandied about, are
bereft of substance while asshole is so potent as to be proffered to label an entire age. If this is the Age of the Asshole,
it isn’t because we suddenly find assholes compelling, or
because it’s easier than ever to be one. It’s because it’s one
of the few words left that we all seem to actually understand. These days, if you’re not a socialist then you must be
a fascist; but we’re all assholes now.