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Is Payton Hobart from Netflix's "The Politician" Too Unrealistic? Not Really. I Used to Be Him

10/2/2019

36 Comments

 
Last week, Netflix debuted producer Ryan Murphy’s new satirical dramedy The Politician, which tells the story of a high schooler named Payton Hobart (Ben Platt from Dear Evan Hansen) who will stop at nothing to win the student government presidency as part of a thirty-year plan to reach the presidency of the United States. Subsequent seasons will chart his progress to the White House. The series produced polarizing reactions, with many major critics arguing that the show is a tonally inconsistent mess anchored by a protagonist whose unlikable, over-mannered persona was unrealistic and off-putting. Willa Paskin of Slate, for example, called Payton not a real person but “a mannered cartoon of one.” TV Guide’s Matt Roush called him “a chilly antihero it's hard to muster much empathy for,” and “more robot than human.” I think that these critics are wrong, and as someone who was basically that person in high school, I can speak to where they err.
Picture
David Corenswet (left) and Ben Platt in "The Politician" (Netflix)
First, I want to stipulate that of course The Politician isn’t realistic in a literal sense. I’m not entirely sure why critics would ask that a fantasy dramedy should be grounded in the probable. At some level, every work of fiction is a departure from reality, and The Politician is stylized and heightened past the point of absurdity. This is both the point and beside it. The lack of realism is no more a knock against it than the surreal elements of Waiting for Godot count against that play for failing to realistically portray the experience of sitting under a dead tree. That said, the show is an indulgent, sloppy mess that never quite balances its elements correctly to stay on the razor’s edge between comedy and tragedy. It leans too far into the outrageous and never quite grounds its story in the moments of poignancy that dot its otherwise emotionally distant narrative.
 
If you have ever seen one of Ryan Murphy’s shows, such as Nip/Tuck, Glee, Scream Queens, or American Horror Story, you already know the style, and its flaws. But underneath the gloss and the candy-colored fantasias, Murphy’s shows aren’t actually about their putative stories. The Politician isn’t really about high school or even politics. Like most of Murphy’s work, underneath the surface is a show about what it meant to be gay in the late twentieth century and the challenges of dealing with a world that demanded you not be if you wanted to be fully a part of it. Murphy is himself gay, and 16 years older than I am.
 
Across Murphy’s shows, we see repeated themes (projected through queer characters sometimes but grande dame actresses more often) of seeking self-expression against a culture demanding conformity, and the consequences of either succeeding or failing to externalize one’s internal self. Rather than go into detail, I recommend you read Emily VanDerWerff’s excellent analysis making the same point.
 
Here, though, I will add that the critics of The Politician, almost to a fault, have failed to see the most important element in understanding both the show and its main character. Payton is in love with the sensitive, handsome golden boy jock, River Barkley (David Corenswet). In their urge to be progressive, most critics passed this off as no big deal, and more than a few did not mention River at all, even though he is not only Payton’s true love but also fairly obvious SYMBOLISM. Not only did River run against Payton for president, precipitating the story, but he also committed suicide in front of him after confessing his love, a fact that the show should have treated with greater weight than it did. Symbolically, his death represents the sacrifice of the true self that Payton makes for power. Murphy and his team lampshade this explicitly near the end of the first season, describing Payton’s later visions of River as his conscience, but it is more than that.
 
Because The Politician is set in the present, it’s less obvious that it is dealing with emotions and ideas that are a few decades out of date, from the time when Ryan Murphy and his colleagues Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan were young men. In those days, to have an ambition for public life meant choosing between being LGBTQ and having a public career. Even today, in many parts of the country, it still does. This election cycle is the first time that an openly gay man is running for the presidential nomination of a major political party and was, however briefly, considered a viable option.
 
I couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of anger when Roush called Payton a chilly robot and when other critics found him to be an unrealistic cartoon. It’s not entirely untrue, but I won’t pretend that it is unrealistic. For a few years, this was my story, too.
 
Yes, I know I say that a lot. Buzzfeed recently had a stupid quiz to determine if you went to a TV high school, highlighting the ridiculous things that happen on TV teen dramas. And, yes, I lived through more of them than most. The first high school party I went to really was in a mansion—well, a McMansion—and, yes, it involved hundreds of kids, emotional melodrama, and a dramatic police raid. If you’ve seen Can’t Hardly Wait, you were there. And, yes, many of my friends and I all went off to the same college suspiciously close to our hometown for several disappointing seasons that never quite lived up to the original. There were rapes and murders and bombings and suicides and drugs and booze and petty corruption. Payton in the Politician faces an assassination attempt—two, in fact. In college some kids built a bomb and attached it to my dorm room door, and only their incompetence limited the explosive power. Yes, this kind of stuff happens. When I said a while back that my adolescence was far too close to the later seasons of 13 Reasons Why for comfort, it was not an exaggeration. It all seemed normal at the time, but apparently it was far from it. One incident can stand for them all. In the journal I kept in high school, there is a cute little runner about a girl from a wealthy neighboring town who kept showing up at parties to ask me weird questions and try to date one of my friends. I never really knew her, and she would have been a stock character from a bad comedy, except that one night junior year her father murdered her mother and killed himself so grotesquely that the newspapers wouldn’t report the details. It was all like that, really, tragedy waiting to overtake the comedy and the sweetness. Usually, it did.
 
But the things that happened mostly happened around me rather than to me, and that was mostly by design. Growing up in a largely rural area in the 1990s, even one that voted Democratic most of the time, meant that it wasn’t possible to be gay and to imagine a future that didn’t end in some kind of tragedy. My tragedy was that I aspired to public life, to do something more than to just get by. Because I was a gifted student—a genius-level IQ, eventually a National Merit Scholar, graduating at the top of my college class in two different majors in two different schools—it was assumed that I would go on to a public life on the national stage. My teachers would tell me that they expected me to be president, or to sit on the Supreme Court. I thought that I would be a network news anchor, back when that job actually meant something. But I always knew that to aspire to such heights was to make an impossible choice.
 
Even at a personal level, I faced the same unforgivable choice between being and doing. Though my family no longer remember, back then it was not uncommon to hear my father joke with varying degrees of seriousness of how he would disown any son of his who was gay. And I watched my grandparents’ hostility to my lesbian great aunt’s partner even after my great aunt’s death, refusing to acknowledge the obvious. My father isn’t like that anymore, and my grandparents are long dead, but the past was what it was. At school, my high school friends would openly joke about wanting to beat and kill gay people, and I had to pretend not to care. Late one night at college orientation, when the whole group of us from home plus their new athlete friends—my friends were football players then because that’s what happens when you attend a TV high school—were hanging out, one of our random temporary roommates, an arts student who wore a purple beret, announced unbidden to the group that he was bisexual. It ended as you would expect.
 
Over the course of my youth, I became the person I imagined I had to be, but the cost of doing so was high. I hated my lisp, so I trained myself to speak the way powerful people did. But talking like a newscaster or a politician sounds inauthentic, no matter how smoothly I spoke or how beautiful the words. (To this day, TV producers think I’m pretending, but it is the only voice I have left.) I learned what everyone liked and was the master of the two-minute conversation that sounded enough like I cared to make you feel like I listened. And most never quite noticed that I never said anything about myself. My parents grew up working class and after we had money, I had to learn to act the part. I had no actual sense of style, so I borrowed one. I modeled myself on the preppie, athletic golden boy who sat atop the social pyramid when we were all very young. We were friends for a time before he went off to train full time to be a pro athlete. Like River’s ghost in The Politician, he hovered over my life as a reminder of the path I wasn’t on. His glamorous life in European capitals and on the international stage, eventually with a beautiful wife and smiling kids in tow, showed up in newspaper articles and TV stories, the background noise of my life. I did such a good job of mimicking him that when we saw each other again nearly 20 years later, we were wearing almost identical clothes, from shirt to shoes. Eventually the real and the fake become indistinguishable.
 
Of course, I was never going to be him, or anything close. But I became the practiced, mannered politician I thought that I had to be. I started out at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, but I trained myself to make friends higher up, and I learned to act the part as needed. By the end of high school, I was a version of the person I wanted to pretend to be. I was friends with all the highest-ranking kids and moved in all the right circles. My closest friend was the captain of the football team, and I had a standing invitation to all the best parties. I spoke fearlessly to power and earned the respect of my peers by not being afraid of the principal, of the mayor, of the congressman. The late Robert Novak, of CNN, was duly impressed when I had an impromptu debate with my local congressman and got the better of him. In college, Ann Curry, then of the Today show, told me that she had never been asked so challenging a question as I asked during a speech, and it made my reputation for the rest of my college career. She also called me a “smartass” when she thought no one was listening. When I look back at the surviving tapes of my journalism projects then, it was no wonder that my professor, one of Barbara Walters’s old producers, thought me a natural news anchor. It wasn’t really a compliment.
 
I ran for class president senior year of high school, and I thought that all of the work I had done to build myself into a public person would pay off. I knew the right people, counted two-thirds of my class as friends of some kind, and was the best-known person in the school. I performed the role flawlessly, spoke extemporaneously as though from a teleprompter, and did not win. It turns out that the distance that the fake me put between me and everyone else was unbridgeable. One year, my English project was to write an autobiography with “ruthless honesty.” Obviously, I could never do that. So I wrote something that seemed honest, though it was only a simulacrum. I always knew how to sprinkle in just enough mildly embarrassing material to make any story feel real. The teacher wrote on it what he thought was a compliment: “You seem like a benevolent alien sent here to observe us.”
 
None of them saw, of course, how much it was killing me. Because I forever feared saying the wrong thing or making the smallest mistake, I couldn’t be the person they wanted me to be. I spent a lot of time alone because it was easier than pretending all the time. In both high school and college, my friends were forever angry with me for not being as open and engaged and present as they wanted. I pulled off a high-wire act, but the smallest breeze would have blown me over. It was a horrible choice to offer a child, to have to decide between being who you are and doing what you want to do in life. In that time and that place, one was impossible, so the other had to suffice.
 
I went to college, or rather the mask did, and when I was good, I was very good. When the public version of me was at the height of his powers, he could move mountains with a word. Celebrities and politicians and administrative flunkies bent to my will because I carefully managed the power I had, punched far above my weight, and wielded an unyielding morality as a weapon. I was the kind of prick who marched into the college president’s office and expected that she would answer me. And she did. I was the kind of arrogant fellow who made an enemy of the dean by refusing to follow restrictive rules meant for lesser mortals and who could force the dean to publicly present me with an award for doing so through gritted teeth simply because I really was better than all the rest of them. Half the network news anchors of the early 2000s knew my name.
 
But I couldn’t keep it up. It’s exhausting to fabricate a life and to aspire to hollow thrones. I started getting sick, and no one noticed that I was depressed. That’s the trouble with faking it. Eventually you get so good at it that it’s impossible to be anything else. Despite the glossy mask I wore, my heart wasn’t in it. In one journalism class, I sat near girl of maybe twenty made up like Barbara Walters, with a tower of sprayed hair, a dark pantsuit, and heavy makeup. She sat ramrod straight and always seemed to be looking for the right camera angle, though there were no cameras. Every day she woke up and dressed herself up like the host of a TV newsmagazine and pretended. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to be like that. Several classmates went on to local TV careers, reporting on car accidents and giggling about the morning weather report. I did not. I went through the motions, but the sheer amount of fakery that goes into making TV news stories was beyond depressing, and the more I saw how being a TV journalist was just another mask, the worse it made me feel.
 
I tentatively sought out community with other gay kids sophomore year, and that was even worse. I went to a campus meeting of the LGBTQ group, and I could not imagine a more off-putting introduction to being queer. The group leader’s icebreaker involved having everyone stand up to announce which orifices one had penetrated or had had penetrated. Then they danced to disco music and planned an event where they would share their first sexual experiences over loudspeakers in the center of campus. They, too, were wearing masks. Their performative homosexuality was a mirror image, but one I had no interest in. I never wanted “gay” to be the first word of my obituary, and there was no possible world in which I would shatter what was left of my former self in a public explosion. I’d like to say that this is where just the right person walked in and changed everything, since that’s how movies and TV shows work, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, I got a montage of bad dates straight out of a direct-to-video comedy. Whatever you imagine, it was worse. In that time, and that place, the only people who were openly gay were those who had no choice or who weaponized their identity to political ends.
 
It all fell apart halfway through college, though no one but me ever noticed. That’s the trouble with always being at arm’s length from your own life. Those around you don’t think about you except when you are performing your part in their lives. You are just a character in a TV show they don’t really watch. The TV professor took a dislike to me because I didn’t feel real to her, and she made clear that I would never work in television. The depression I had felt off and on for years grew worse, and the only way out of it was to give up my ambitions for the public life I wouldn’t have, at least not as I imagined it. No one really noticed that, either, until one day the wunderkind who was going to be on TV or in politics no longer was.
 
The world, and my life, changed a lot since then, mostly for the better, and it’s no longer necessary to choose which half of a life to lead. But the damage from the toxic culture of that time can’t really be undone. I didn’t get to have those quiet moments of grace that dot the youthful memories of most, and even the happy thoughts of younger days have the aching echo of the impossible distance that separated me from friends and family. It’s been years since I have spoken to most of my old friends, and close to decades since I have spoken to anyone in my family besides my brother and my parents.
 
If Ryan Murphy’s goals for The Politician remain unmet, it is because he did not lean far enough into the damage that the demand to lead only half a life inflicts on those who are talented enough to need to make that choice but not prepared enough to understand what that choice entails. His show is a bit sterile because it never commits to choosing whether it wants to explore Payton’s identity literally or symbolically, weaving between both in ways that never quite add up. At several points in the show, Payton asks why he can’t feel anything, and he only really experiences emotions when he gives up his ambitions. Critics like Roush read this as the random sputterings of a robot who isn’t quite human, but that’s not the case. To feel was to be disqualified from the life promised to others. Far from being unrealistic, Payton Hobart is all too familiar to me. He was me, at least for a while. And as far as I know, I’m still human.
36 Comments
Joe Scales
10/2/2019 10:12:30 am

Oh, I wouldn't take the pans from other critics personally. Just a guess here, as I haven't watched the show... but knowing Murphy, they probably don't like it because he's making fun of aspiring politicians; and a liberal one at that in the midst of our current election cycle. They don't want people to get the idea that the current presidential challengers might be cartoon characters as well.

Glee was at its best when it poked fun at all characters regardless of their standing. Then its concept became more and more like one of those ABC after-school specials; always with a message on its way to becoming unwatchable.

Reply
Victor the Talking Horse
10/2/2019 01:00:20 pm

I'm not convinced our current crop of Congressmen and women, Senatorial men and women and the current administration are not cartoon characters. I mean during the last election I voted for Carter Pwertersmith and much to my dismay his opponent was elected. Alas, alas.

Reply
William Fitzgerald
10/2/2019 06:02:17 pm

I couldn't help but laugh at some of the more ironic anecdotes. Probably not your intention to be funny, so sorry.

It seems you had a lack of some empathy in high school and college. Was this because of your detachment from yourself?

It's interesting that the people we imagine as having the perfect life are in reality often more troubled than ourselves. I sometimes envy those that can have a simple, but far from perfect life: poor with five children, attending church every Sunday and perfectly content, untroubled and convinced in their bigotry.

(Though, I can't quite capture the feeling of wanting to be satisfied with the simple, but knowing you shouldn't be).

Reply
Joe Scales
10/2/2019 09:27:45 pm


"It's interesting that the people we imagine..."

It's actually quite frightening what you're imagining, you imbecile.

Reply
William Fitzgerald
10/2/2019 10:22:06 pm

The most unkind of cuts. But, then I don't envy the empty man; only the man yet to be fulfilled.

Still, I forgive you and your outburst. God bless your heart.

TONY S.
10/2/2019 09:48:25 pm

IMO there's nothing envious about living your life in a state of complete ignorance no matter what the circumstances. You can have a simple, rewarding, uncomplicated and contented existence and not be an utter ignoramus at the same time.

Reply
William Fitzgerald
10/2/2019 10:51:18 pm

Ignorance is bliss. But, it's not exactly that is it? It's an enchanted life perhaps. As most are not ignorant in knowing their ultimate fate, it's therefore a matter of living life with meaning or understanding. To achieve both is true bliss, but have one and you can still be rewarded and unfulfilled. Is it so wrong to wish for a certain kind of meaning, even if you are considered ignorant?

TONY S.
10/2/2019 11:34:01 pm

No, that in itself isn't wrong. There are those who need or want to believe there is some overall meaning to their existence in order to face life on a day to day basis. I don't fault people for that basic human need, or how they do it, or what they choose to believe even if I don't agree with their mindset. As long as it doesn't harm others in the end. I suppose it comes down to individual perspective. What constitutes meaning one person may be very different from another.

Joe Scales
10/3/2019 09:47:10 am

"IMO there's nothing envious about living your life in a state of complete ignorance no matter what the circumstances."

Ironic since those you look down upon think the same of you. Ignorance is equal opportunity.

TONY S.
10/3/2019 10:49:38 am

Why so touchy, Joe? Don't be so damned sensitive. Who exactly are these faceless, nameless people who think the same of me? And how do they know anything about me personally, specifically, to form an unbiased, fair and accurate assessment? I was speaking in general terms, not about anyone here. It's not personal, jut an honest observation about how I've seen some people behave. It is what it is.

Ignorance isn't equal opportunity. You either are ignorant, or willfully remain so (either in general or about a certain subject) or you aren't. Opinions are equal opportunity, since everyone has a right to them, even though they may be ignorant, in which case I simply ignore them as valueless to the conversation.

Are you honestly telling me Joe, that with the number of people we've seen on this blog who talk completely out of their asses, that you would consider someone else calling you ignorant a completely equal assessment? I KNOW you don't believe THAT, man.

SILAS RUTHYN
10/3/2019 11:39:48 am

Who cares about the worthless opinions of a bunch of ignorant jackasses? You know, the kind of people that aren't intelligent enough to grasp the concepts of things like climate change being real, Trump being a con artist and wannabe dictator,and the fact that there is no God?

"Science? History? The arts? Bah! No thanks, I'm a mindless fuck-witted religious conservative, and my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge!!"

Yeah,right. "Ignorance is equal opportunity". Please. You know who thinks that way? Someone who's as ignorant as fuck and is insecure as hell about it. You can't level the playing field that way, much as you like to think you can. You want to try? Learn things so you don't sound, um, I don't know, fucking ignorant.

TONY S.
10/3/2019 11:59:28 am

That's a little overboard.

TONY S.
10/3/2019 01:36:18 pm

In this day and age, there's nothing wrong with being proud of the amount of knowledge one has accumulated. Especially if you've done the bulk of that knowledge accumulation before the advent of social media and before the internet made information so much more easily accessible. Of course, you have to be able to tell a good source from a bad one as well. Bad/biased/non-factual/out-dated info is useless when it comes to the collection of objective facts. It also hampers one's ability to take part in an intelligent discussion, for those who legitimately care about such things.

An additional point is that, with information being so readily available to everybody, there is even less excuse for someone to be generally ignorant. But I don't judge people by that fact alone. It's who you are as a person that matters to me the most personally. Why anybody would care is beyond me, as is why they'd let themselves fall prey to a knee jerk reaction like "I know you are but what am I" over it. If someone does look down on me for NOT being ignorant, well then, it can only come from insecurity, and their position is null and void as far as I'm concerned. Because it isn't based on fact, it's based on emotion. It's also pathetic and juvenile.

I happen to think that a natural, lifelong, unquenchable and deep seated curiosity combined with an authentic love for multiple subjects that are close to one's heart is a virtue for any human being to have. (It's one of the keys to being content in life, and maybe even one of the keys to being happy, or as close to being so as is humanly possible. That was always my view: true contentment is having your family, a few close friends, and your interests. Everything else is fleeting, shallow, and of little importance in the grand scheme of things. People twist themselves up into knots trying to find happiness or the ultimate meaning of life, when it's actually simple). It's also mutually beneficial for everyone, since we can all potentially learn from one another. On the other hand, if someone is deliberately talking BS and they think I'm dumb enough to fall for it, thinking that they can put one over on me, it insults my intelligence. I don't think that's an unreasonable reaction to have. If that person then expects respect for their uneducated opinion and I don't give it, and if that upsets them, it's no skin off of my back. That's their issue, not mine. I'm not interested in their personal drama. If, however, I know someone knows what they're talking about because he/she has shown through discourse that we have a mutual understanding of a given subject, I come to respect them. I don't just dole out that kind of respect to someone who babbles BS for 20 minutes and says nothing of substance, even if they try to justify their expectations of automatic respect by saying they went to college. Nope, sorry, there are plenty of dipshits who went through school and barely learned squat. You have to prove you know what you're talking about, whether or not you were formally educated.

I'm also humble enough to know when I don't know something, even if it has to do with a subject that I know extremely well. I'm never above admitting it and asking for more information. That's how one grows as a person. A lot of ignorant people remain so because they're too insecure to admit they're lacking in knowledge. I find that silly, and immature to boot. It's also the reason for the rise of anti-intellectualism in the US, and why the fringe movement has so much support. Because, as Silas said, they have to think that their ignorance is equal to knowledge, usually in order not to feel insecure. The problem is, it still doesn't seem to make them feel better about themselves.

Well, that's all I have to say. *BOW* and *EXIT*

Anyway, let me conclude by saying I've both learned new things from people here, as well as disagreed with people. I've got no problem with either. That's the way learning and intelligent discourse works. We can disagree and still respect each other's viewpoints. Even when we think they're flat out wrong. ;)

William Fitzgerald
10/3/2019 06:05:49 pm

Ignorance is relative. Knowledge is important. But, having knowledge alone is little better than being a human computer. Understanding is what we should strive for, better yet wisdom. But, also understand that knowledge is subject to value judgements as in the value of the subject. Someone may have more knowledge about sport statistics, or comic books, or the Bible than you'd ever have any hope of accumulating in a topic that interests you, but you may still dismiss this person as ignorant because they don't have knowledge in what's "important."

TONY S.
10/3/2019 06:25:54 pm

I agree with your points William.

While I only care about my own personal interests, I respect anyone who discusses with authority any subject that interests them, either personally or professionally. Take for example US economics and African art. These are two things that I care nothing about. Though I would have no desire to discuss such things because they do not interest me in the slightest, I would recognize and respect somebody who could display their passion for both through intelligent discussion.

Kent
10/3/2019 07:50:14 pm

"Especially if you've done the bulk of that knowledge accumulation before the advent of social media"

WHAT THE FUCK?

TONY S.
10/4/2019 05:41:26 am

Ha!

G.O.Y.
10/2/2019 08:15:08 pm

Restricting this to high school:

Everyone had rapes in their high school years whether they knew it or not.

I had to take the call from the wife when the man two doors up the street blew his head off.

The father of one of my classmates was blown up by a carbomb, in the U.S.

One of my best friends skipped senior year to go fight in Rhodesia.

Guy killed his family? Allow me to introduce you to Bradford Bishop.

No one's scared of their mayor or Congressman.

Sorry, but I'm getting a whiff of retrohebephrenia here.

The writer seems to think that someone who susses him out "dislikes" him.

As someone once told me "I didn't need to hear it but you needed to say it."

Reply
William Fitzgerald
10/2/2019 08:24:28 pm

Hopefully not if you were home-schooled...

Reply
HUDSON USHER
10/2/2019 09:39:26 pm

My father Malcolm died when a mine that my family owned in Wales caved in.

My brother Roderick drowned when our Pennsylvania home was destroyed in a flood.

My sister Madeline was made out to be a walking corpse in a puerile little tale written by a drunken hack of an author.

My son Aram let himself be killed in a duel by a man who was blackmailing his wife, leaving my newly born grandson Ludlow fatherless.

You didn't need to say it, and we didn't need to hear it. You need a good bonk over the head with my silver lion headed cane.

Reply
SEARS JAMES
10/2/2019 09:54:30 pm

This was a little after high school, but three of my closest friends and I had a close encounter with a nasty female shape-shifter.

Reply
William Fitzgerald
10/2/2019 10:53:44 pm

The proper term is Trans. Go to your safe space and think about who you've triggered.

SEARS JAMES
10/2/2019 11:19:00 pm

I've obviously triggered someone who hasn't read GHOST STORY by Peter Straub.

Kent
10/3/2019 12:19:54 am

Some prefer "BAM".

William Fitzgerald
10/3/2019 01:00:20 am

"It's not us the gods control, but the ghosts that haunt us into doing their will."

TIMOTHY FLYTE
10/2/2019 09:56:34 pm

Do NOT talk to ME about shape-shifters!

Reply
Jason Colavito link
10/3/2019 01:31:53 pm

I'm sorry that happened to you, G.O.Y. Tragedy surrounds us everywhere, and it doesn't make it good or right or easy. My essay, and the earlier one linked in it, are not meant to suggest that my experiences were unique, only that they happened where the media say they shouldn't, in ways that the media say are "unrealistic" when depicted in art. These things happen, but we try to pretend they don't. My point is that pretending and forgetting don't really help.

If you don't think my essay worthy of reading, you are welcome not to read it. But you can also complain to Slate, which recently published a very similar personal essay by a writer reflecting on the similarities between her life and a new novel about a high schooler in Kansas. https://slate.com/culture/2019/10/ben-lerner-the-topeka-school-city-history-republicans-fred-phelps.html

Reply
G.O.Y.
10/3/2019 08:39:21 pm

You missed the point. None of those things happened to me. They happened to people around me. Contrary to the Facts of Life theme song, it's not all about you. G.O.Y. The worst things that happened to me were my father wanting to return me to the adoption store when I was 16 and telling my uncle that he'd break my neck if I ever had a girlfriend, which seems queer since I'm a straight male. Those were in fact liberating experiences.

G.O.Y.

Demosthenes
10/3/2019 01:52:52 am

I always suspected that you have a genius level IQ. Your ability to translate ancient texts written in French, Arabic, and Hebrew, presumably without any formal education in these languages clued me in.

Reply
Kent
10/3/2019 02:20:57 am

You can strike Arabic and Hebrew from that list. What impressed me was the stable full of unicorns.

If you think I'm saying your assessment is dubious, "If the shoe fits, let him wear it."

Reply
William Fitzgerald
10/3/2019 06:17:59 am

Google Translate.

Reply
Kent
10/3/2019 10:01:48 am

There are extra shoes.

Jr. Time Lord
10/4/2019 09:59:58 pm

Mr. Colavito,

My highschool experience was idyllic compared to yours. The only time I ever saw drugs was the first kegger I went to as a sophomore. Luckily I was in drinking. Galen had just pulled out cocaine. I said to my friends we need to get out of here. I know more than uttered those words when police swarmed in from out of nowhere. When the cops grabbed Galen and began slamming his head into the hood of the police car. His head was going up and down like a dribbled basketball. This was the first time I saw police beat the s*** out of somebody. Other than Rodney King, I have never seen a black person be beaten. I have seen a whole bunch of white people though. A few of them deserved it but most did not.

Gay students began coming out during my junior year. I was probably the only person that really didn't care. I had my own issues to deal with. The stupid violence didn't start till my senior year. I stayed out of it at first. The college my best friend was attending offered me a theater scholarship to play football. I'm not even joking. I decided to do a school play instead of track my senior year. I got to know most of the gay students and they were pretty cool people. Then a now former best friend embarrassed the hell out of me. For no reason whatsoever he spit in the face of a gay student. Just because he was a homophobic turd. I've never been more ashamed of the people that hung around with than that moment. From then on, I became their guardian. I didn't let anyone mess with them. Graduation wasn't far away and I wouldn't be seeing these homophobic people again.

My college experience was more like your high school experience. I discovered institutionalized racism, students who couldn't read or write that could play football, a university president dismissed for firing the football coach, another University president using the international student program as a mail order bride service, a lying drama queen take over the broadcasting department with false allegations and having her family friend hired instead, and a parolee from a murder and rape of an elderly woman in the 70s NR nursing department. This piece of s*** murdered someone very special to me. I've been waiting 23 years for the state to kill him.

Reply
Kent
10/4/2019 10:45:02 pm

"I had my own issues to deal with."

It's good to see you've adjusted to being a fucking idiot.

Reply
Titus pullo
10/5/2019 09:25:01 pm

What do u care what other people think. Hard to live that but its true. Being straight i cant imagine the angst over the crap we all deal with in life. But on ur deathbed does it matter all the worry about stuff that honestly doesnt matter

Reply
ado stunt cars 2 link
10/7/2019 02:54:12 am

His show is a bit sterile because it never commits to choosing whether it wants to explore Payton’s identity literally or symbolically,

Reply

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        • Ancient Americas
      • Supernatural History
      • Book Image Galleries
    • Videos
    • Collection: Ancient Alien Fraud >
      • Chariots of the Gods at 50
      • Secret History of Ancient Astronauts
      • Of Atlantis and Aliens
      • Aliens and Ancient Texts
      • Profiles in Ancient Astronautics >
        • Erich von Däniken
        • Robert Temple
        • Giorgio Tsoukalos
        • David Childress
      • Blunders in the Sky
      • The Case of the False Quotes
      • Alternative Authors' Quote Fraud
      • David Childress & the Aliens
      • Faking Ancient Art in Uzbekistan
      • Intimations of Persecution
      • Zecharia Sitchin's World
      • Jesus' Alien Ancestors?
      • Extraterrestrial Evolution?
    • Collection: Skeptic Magazine >
      • America Before Review
      • Native American Discovery of Europe
      • Interview: Scott Sigler
      • Golden Fleeced
      • Oh the Horror
      • Discovery of America
      • Supernatural Television
      • Review of Civilization One
      • Who Lost the Middle Ages
      • Charioteer of the Gods
    • Collection: Ancient History >
      • Prehistoric Nuclear War
      • The China Syndrome
      • Atlantis, Mu, and the Maya
      • Easter Island Exposed
      • Who Built the Sphinx?
      • Who Built the Great Pyramid?
      • Archaeological Cover Up?
    • Collection: The Lovecraft Legacy >
      • Pauwels, Bergier, and Lovecraft
      • Lovecraft in Bergier
      • Lovecraft and Scientology
    • Collection: UFOs >
      • Alien Abduction at the Outer Limits
      • Aliens and Anal Probes
      • Ultra-Terrestrials and UFOs
      • Rebels, Queers, and Aliens
    • Scholomance: The Devil's School
    • Prehistory of Chupacabra
    • The Templars, the Holy Grail, & Henry Sinclair
    • Magicians of the Gods Review
    • The Curse of the Pharaohs
    • The Antediluvian Pyramid Myth
    • Whitewashing American Prehistory
    • James Dean's Cursed Porsche
  • The Library
    • Ancient Mysteries >
      • Ancient Texts >
        • Mesopotamian Texts >
          • Eridu Genesis
          • Atrahasis Epic
          • Epic of Gilgamesh
          • Kutha Creation Legend
          • Babylonian Creation Myth
          • Descent of Ishtar
          • Resurrection of Marduk
          • Berossus
          • Comparison of Antediluvian Histories
        • Egyptian Texts >
          • The Shipwrecked Sailor
          • Dream Stela of Thutmose IV
          • The Papyrus of Ani
          • Classical Accounts of the Pyramids
          • Inventory Stela
          • Manetho
          • Eratosthenes' King List
          • The Story of Setna
          • Leon of Pella
          • Diodorus on Egyptian History
          • On Isis and Osiris
          • Famine Stela
          • Old Egyptian Chronicle
          • The Book of Sothis
          • Horapollo
          • Al-Maqrizi's King List
        • Teshub and the Dragon
        • Hermetica >
          • The Three Hermeses
          • Kore Kosmou
          • Corpus Hermeticum
          • The Asclepius
          • The Emerald Tablet
          • Hermetic Fragments
          • Prologue to the Kyranides
          • The Secret of Creation
          • Ancient Alphabets Explained
          • Prologue to Ibn Umayl's Silvery Water
          • Book of the 24 Philosophers
          • Aurora of the Philosophers
        • Hesiod's Theogony
        • Periplus of Hanno
        • Ctesias' Indica
        • Sanchuniathon
        • Sima Qian
        • Syncellus's Enoch Fragments
        • The Book of Enoch
        • Slavonic Enoch
        • Sepher Yetzirah
        • Tacitus' Germania
        • De Dea Syria
        • Aelian's Various Histories
        • Julius Africanus' Chronography
        • Eusebius' Chronicle
        • Chinese Accounts of Rome
        • Ancient Chinese Automaton
        • The Orphic Argonautica
        • Fragments of Panodorus
        • Annianus on the Watchers
        • The Watchers and Antediluvian Wisdom
      • Medieval Texts >
        • Medieval Legends of Ancient Egypt >
          • Medieval Pyramid Lore
          • John Malalas on Ancient Egypt
          • Fragments of Abenephius
          • Akhbar al-zaman
          • Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah
          • Murtada ibn al-‘Afif
          • Al-Maqrizi on the Pyramids
          • Al-Suyuti on the Pyramids
        • The Hunt for Noah's Ark
        • Byzantine World Chronicle
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • Book of Thousands
        • Voyage of Saint Brendan
        • Power of Art and of Nature
        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Atlantis as Biblical History
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Atlantis and Nimrod
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and Hanno's Periplus
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
          • Amazing New Light (Hoax)
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • History of Paleontology
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • America Known to the Ancients
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Remarkable Discoveries Within the Sphinx (Hoax)
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • The Shaver Mystery >
          • Lovecraft and the Deros
          • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • CIA Search for the Ark of the Covenant
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • The Fall of the Sky
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Poltergeist UFOs
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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