Brooks Brothers Anarchist

Pranks, hoaxes, fraud, and forgery. I've always loved pranks and hoaxes, and while I certainly don't condone fraud and forgery, I'd be lying if I said I didn't find those subjects fascinating. Mad Magazine and The Great Brain gave me a taste for that sort of thing as a child, but I didn't fully realize all the anarchic, comedic possibilities of a well done hoax until I was in junior high school.

After a long, boring (in the coma inducing sense of the word) day at school, I'd hang out with my friend Sigurd Jarlson in his parents rec room. Usually we would watch cartoons or read comic books, but one day Will discovered his father's old comedy albums. Cheech and Chong found their way on to the turntable, as did McLean & McLean, the Canadian knockoff of the aforementioned, mostly American duo.

As much as I enjoyed both acts, there was another, and as far as I know, unheard of gem in Mr. Jarlson's collection. It was a cassette tape, and on it, hastily scrawled with a black sharpie, someone had written: Id's Shit. I don't know who was responsible for it, but it was hysterically shocking, and even funnier was the back story that went with the recording. The person or persons responsible for the recording had mailed copies of it to disc jockeys all across the United States, and then sat back and laughed as as competing radio stations sued each other over who owned the rights to the recording.

That, in my eyes, then and now, was brilliant. Raising hell just for the sake of it. Sticking it to the man. For years I labored under the assumption that the man was older, white, wore a three piece suit, aviator frames, voted Republican, went to Church every Sunday, and held the kind of opinions associated with that kind of person. Liberals, well, liberals were, or should have been, a lot like my wife or Seth McFarlane: funny, smart, sophistacted, handsome and or beautiful, well-read, and for the most part moderate, but having an admirable sympathy for the underdog and or downtrodden.

P.J. O'Rourke, and later, Tommy Chong, of all people, challenged my assumptions about who the good guys and the bad guys are. "Ship of Fools", an essay about O'Rourke's trip down the Volga river with a ragtag bunch of aging American leftists, demolished my hitherto unassailable belief that all liberals were like my wife or Seth McFarlane: funny, smart, sophistacted, handsome and or beautiful, well-read, and for the most part moderate, but having an admirable sympathy for the underdog and or downtrodden.

But it was Chong's appearance on a local television chat show that was the real intellectual dynamite. Bearded, but wearing a slick Armani suit; a guy who made a fortune selling comedy albums to stoners, but who collected vintage modernist paintings. The talk-show host was appalled and enraged by both his success and his non-chalance about how he achieved it. It was funny. Chong's appearance and answers were definitely about hell-raising for the sake of hell-raising, but something was off-kilter about the interview, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

It took awhile for it to sink in, but then it hit me: the talk-show host held all the correct and liberal attitudes Canadians are supposed to have on a variety of issues. Nobody has any serious disagreement with the consensus on peacekeeping, multiculturalism, or single payer healthcare.

However, the woman's mindset was fundamentally conservative. If she agreed with any of the Canadian shibboleths mentioned above, it was because she didn't like change, rather then whether or not any of these things were actually good or useful. Being a liberal, a conservative, a skeptic, or a believer is a state of mind or an approach to looking at the world, not a set of opinions about any given topic.

If James O'Keefe doesn't consciously understand this principle, I think he grasps it on an intuitive level. The nice nihilist in me enjoyed O'Keefe's recent video sting. So welcome to the club, Mr. O'Keefe: it's pretty exclusive, as very few people are like my wife, Seth McFarlane, Tommy Chong, and P.J. O'Rourke: genuinely funny, smart, sophistacted, handsome and or beautiful, well-read, and for the most part moderate, but having an admirable sympathy for the underdog and or downtrodden.

However, if you want to keep your membership and avoid becoming just another right-wing Michael Moore clone, I hope you realize that an anarchist can be quite comfortable in a Brooks Brothers suit, and still piss off the establishment, regardless of which petty troll is pulling the levers of the machinery.

Just ask Tommy Chong if you don't believe me.