Playing the game
By Matt Worley

I took a lot of literature classes in college (as was required by my major), which meant I had to do a lot of reading. There were about three Shakespeare classes (covering Tragedies, Comedies, Histories and other assortments), a British literature class (which began somewhere around Jane Eyre and ended with James Joyce), and an American literature class, among others. The most demanding (as far as outside reading went) was the American literature class. We read a novel a week, wrote a paper a week and basically got lambasted most of the time by a retired professor who taught the class for fun and little profit. He didn't care what people thought of him (he was beyond tenure) or his methods. I came to like his style, mostly because it seemed like he hated everyone. That was close to my own mood while taking the class.

I didn't read every page of all of the novels. There were some that I skipped because I'd read them before and didn't like the first time around (The Scarlet Letter stands out), and others that I just didn't like or even care to understand after the first fifty pages or so (like The Jungle). And some were surprisingly good (The Awakening, The Sun Also Rises--I don't like any of Hemingway's other work--and Age Of Innocence). I still had to write a paper and possibly be able to give informative answers in class on all of the books. If the professor didn't like your answer, he would usually say, "You haven't read the book, have you?" and then rage on the evils of modern society and slacking young college students. I could usually fake him out, because I usually had a general knowledge of what the books were about.

This was the trick of college. While most people would say that college was a place to expand your mind, learn about people and blah, blah, blah, it's really about learning to fake it. If you can cram and make an A or B on a test, you win. If you can write a five page essay on a subject you know nothing about and get a good grade, you win. If you can skim a book in an hour or so and ace the paper, you win. No one cares if you remember anything in the long term, as long as you remember it for the test.

It teaches you to do the same socially. You realize that there are many people you're never going to be able to really please while staying yourself, so if you have to be around them you assimilate. If you want some of the beer out of the keg and no one knows who you are, take a quick look around and tell the appropriate joke. If the girl feels strongly about some issue or another (these can change quickly, so you have to be on your feet) and you want to get laid, you have to lie. None of this works, however, if you aren't convincing.

I think this is why we all like Bill Clinton. He's the guy in college everyone thought was cool. He could hang with the frat guys, the stoners, the nerds and business majors. Everyone thought he was cool because he knew the game. Bob Dole has either forgotten the game or is just too old to learn it. He beats dead horses and talks about things everyone can tell he knows nothing about. He champions a tax deal that lead to our huge national debt (Didn't learn the first time around Bob? We know you were there.) and condemns people, music and movies he knows nothing about. We all know that he's trying to fake it--that's why no one believes him.

Clinton may be lying his butt off, but we believe him because he's one of the guys, a friend of the girls, and that nice young boy who cut the lawn. Dole is just an old codger who seems to hate everything to do with young people, hasn't made his own bed in the last fifty years and doesn't understand the purpose of popular culture. To be specific for just a minute, Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction (named by Dole as movies that promote heroin use) do show people doing heroin. So do the national anti-heroin ads on TV. Personally, I thought Trainspotting was one of the most anti-drug movies I've seen in a long time. The cool thing about it was that it wasn't nearly as melodramatic and condescending as Leaving Las Vegas.

If you've used and abused heroin, those movies may have left you jonesin' for a hit. But so does the anti-heroin commercial. Thing about heroin is the memory. It's like seeing an old girlfriend you used to fight with for hours on end, but only remembering the long sessions of making love. This exposure to heroin doesn't work on people who haven't done the drug. Crawling into a toilet bowl for a suppository doesn't evoke any kind of happy memories in a non-heroin user. It makes you remember that time you threw up into an unflushed toilet.

So, you're wondering why Clinton is so far ahead in the polls? It has nothing to do with politics. People can identify with Clinton because he has learned the trick of appealing to everyone‹learned in college no doubt. Dole never learned to play that game, which is why he's going to end up losing.

Matt Worley has played the game occasionally, but it surprises him so much when it works that he has to get off the game cold turkey for a while.

return to the Shut up, I'm talking page
return to the LIES home page
return to the A&A home page