this is the stuff of susie(’s)

I’m blogging daily for those crazy kids at CollegeOTR. Fair warning: tomorrow I’m writing about Brooke Hogan. Sorry, guys, but I want the page views!!

I’m officially twitting, so get on it if you swing that way.

I’m hoping this will be easier to stick with than, uh, this has been, given the limited word count.

We’ll see!

image courtesy of the one and only Dave Warwak.

As a journalist, I’m not ashamed to admit that crazy vegans make for really fun news stories. But as a vegan, I sometimes have trouble reading past the headlines.

For the last few weeks I’ve watched the drama around school teacher and loudly proclaimed vegan Dave Warwak play out in Google News. In a soy nutshell (if you, too, winced at those headlines): Warwak, 44, went on a personal mission to convert the students in his art classes at Wisconsin’s Fox River Grove Middle School to veganism. As soon as the news hit the papes, Warwak was fired.

I don’t doubt that Warwak meant well. He just went vegan(gelical) in January, he’s used to molding impressionable young minds, and he probably thought he was doing the right thing. Tactless proselytizing looks much better from the inside–just like for religious teachers who’ve similarly been fired for leading prayers in class.

It’s not totally the media’s fault for characterizing people such as Warwak and the countless irresponsible “vegan” parents as vegan first and crazy second: that’s how they portray themselves. And when the vegan community stays quiet in implicit support it only makes it easier for the next crazy vegan to run with their unfounded moral righteousness. Even worse when they’re loud, misinformed and on the offensive defensive.

Vegans across the country have taken up Warwak’s “cause”–the same Warwak who just crashed the middle school homecoming parade, and handed out cards that said Santa Claus “is a lie,” and, “‘Naming a rock, a banana, does not make it food.’” Clearly he teaches art, not English.

Yet Warwak champions are popping up everywhere, from PETA (“Sound the alarm!”), to Meetup.org groups in Chicago, to Manhattan activist-bloggers.

Take Elaine Vigneault, for example.

“It’s yet another example of how vegans are painted as ‘crazy’ and our ideas are not taken seriously,” she writes. Unfortunately for Elaine, a lot of us are crazy: bat-shit, balls-to-the-wall, all-out freaking crazy. And the less that reasonable vegans differentiate themselves from the crazies, the more the entire world will go on believing that we are humorless ascetics.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, however, the humorless ascetics appear to be winning. Elaine says vegans “should be rude and obnoxious,” because we are the enlightened, and should spread our wisdom among the evil-doing masses. Well, that’s basically what she says. “Needlessly killing millions of animals is far beyond rude and obnoxious… And people who do it, people who promote it, and people who buy it deserve a little dose of the uncomfortable, rude reality.”

I guess that’s why not a lot of religious extremists hold teaching positions in public American schools, right? Because the uncomfortable, rude reality is just too tempting? Elaine claims Mr. Warwak didn’t have “some vegan cult he was recruiting for,” but when this kind of obnoxious attitude prevails, and the preaching continues, and converting the damned and absolving them of their sins is priority #1, that’s not truly the case. It just gives people more reason to block out, marginalize, alienate and fire the crazy.

You have to give people a reason to take your ideas seriously, especially if you’re challenging their entire paradigm. I don’t know one vegan who chose “the lifestyle” because they saw a disgusting PETA video or were yelled at for wearing leather. Making friends and influencing people is not about breaking them down. This isn’t a debate about animal rights or veganism: it’s about being a responsible, non-crazy adult.

And it’s also about not taking yourself so seriously. Because really, I for one think Warwak, PETA, Vigneault and the rest of the gang are hilarious.

When I first started volunteering at 826 New York City last November, I was warned, as “a journalist,” that I was not to use my role as a tutor to facilitate my “career” as a “writer;” i.e. no interviewing, no poking around, no pursuing of stories behind the secret book-case-come-door panel that leads to the back room at the Superhero Supply Company on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. Considering I was using the opportunity more to clarify if I really did hate kids or not (not, mostly, it turns out) the warning struck me as particularly laughable. But then I found myself writing down all the cute stuff they said…

In April I (temporarily) ended my once-a-week stint disciplining the children at 826–and a few weeks later, I started getting nostalgic for their youth. I realized that my favorite part about the kids was that they weren’t as boring as most of the people I interacted with each day. Examples:

-Do you live with your dad?
-Nope. I live with my friend.
-… How old are you?

-Yeah, like real vegetarians. I have friends who don’t even wear leather…
-Oh my god!

-If my calculations are correct, love is a feeling.

Next time: a collection of quotes from my former grizzled, formerly-homeless-alcoholic 48 year old housemate. I’m all about fair and balanced.

Apparently “weird man” Bob Dylan has been hanging around an unnamed Calabasas elementary school and scaring the young children (including his own grandson, Jakob?) with his guitar–and maybe also with that hat.

Considering these are the kinds of children who will, in a few short years, be hanging out at the Commons and listening to Incubus (and a few short years later be kicked out of the Commons for smoking cigarettes and still listening to Incubus), it’s not too surprising that Dylan is too “weird” for them. That being said, I think he’s a little too weird for me, too.

Anyway, this kind of de facto music class is an interesting move on the part of the Las Virgines School District. I look forward to little scion Jakob Dylan’s progression through the system: perhaps the 2017 CHS musical will be The Times They Are A-Changin’? They could get the rights super-cheap–you know how they roll in C-town.

New York Magazine somewhat recently published a cover story on how (and how not) to praise kids such that they grow up into unmotivated twixter brats who have no self confidence and/or work ethic. In a nutshell: don’t tell them they’re smart (or stupid); do tell them they worked hard (or didn’t). This seems to explain a lot of the nearly life-long problems for a surprising number of my friends: instead of being properly mirrored by their parents and teachers, they got the fun-house version, a warped kind of reality where being smart gets you ahead in life–plus makes you superskinny.

It’s Generation Me Me Me! Or at least that’s how Jean Twenge sees it in this NPR interview. She blames the “self-focus [and] inflated expectations” on 1. schools (and their self-esteem programs [any first-hand evidence of this? sounds like madness to me]), 2. the media (aww, Jean), 3. parents (cum-NYM). She really lets the sarcasm fly in this piece, saying parents act as though “feeling good about yourself is the most important thing in the world–more than working hard or having talent or caring for other people.” And that the citizens of Generation Me (like, um, me!) are entirely self-focused, care only about becoming rich and famous, and feel “entitled and like [we] deserve special treatment.” I think she spits a little on the mic at that point.
After I wiped the hysterical tears from my eyes, this stuff came off like salt in my narcissistic wound. But then I realized that this seems to breed a special, deep-seated and ugly kind of guilt in people who know/think they’re capable of more, but don’t know how to apply themselves to get it. At least they feel good doing it, whereas I blame myself for my failures (like not updating this blog nearly enough). I think the answer is to aim lower. It usually works.