If hell is other people, the ninth rung is other students at State U.
Yes, the worst part of attending a large public university is that with a little luck on test day or a couple of good years at a community college, pretty much any village idiot and his cousin could gain admission, as long as they lived in state. Such was the person who lived across from me my freshman year, a community college transfer by the name of Frank who was by no means stupid, but appeared to have been raised by wolves, racists, or racist wolves.
He once made a derogatory remark about a cheapskate to me by referring to him as "such a Jew," then made matters worse by the ignorant scoundrel's first (and worst) defense: "No, it's not an insult. It's just a common usage." Yeah, maybe from under the rock where you were raised, Frank.
He harbored other unpleasant attitudes that might have made him feel at home at a white supremecist rally. And, tellingly, he was a Clint Eastwood fan.
"Fan" does not do it justice; "insanely obsessed" would suffice. And not just your typical Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, but his movies featuring that all-American vigilante bigot "Dirty Harry" Callahan, who had the charming distinction of hating every ethnic group on the planet.
In an era before DVDs and widespread VCRs, Frank had seen every Dirty Harry movie at least 10 times, and could quote them at length. If I heard Frank say "I gots to know" or "Make my day" one more time…well, you have to ask yourself. Did I shoot six times, or…are you lucky, Frank? Are you lucky, punk?
I was thinking about Frank and his ilk after watching "Invictus," a recent movie that Eastwood directed. It tells the true-life story of Nelson Mandella trying to help build South Africa via rugby and the South African national team, the Springboks, winning the rugby World Cup.
Inspirational stuff, even if you don't believe for a second Matt Damon is Afrikaans or if you weren't completely distracted by the movie's lousy pacing, crummy dialog, and rugby sequences that look like an eighth-grader choreographed them. Actually, it's way, way off the Clint Eastwood ranch, and shows.
Although a mess, "Invictus" does have the charm of being adamantly anti-Frank, I mean, anti-racist. Both black and white South Africans are taken to task, of a sort, and all eventually end up cheering on the Springboks, the beloved (by Afrikaans) and despised (by blacks) rugby team to the World Cup championship game, in which they defeat the New Zealand All-Blacks, named for the all-black uniform and the irony of which is not lost on anybody with an I.Q. over 50.
That would probably include Frank, who, as I mentioned above, was not a complete moron, though when he claimed Richard Nixon was the greatest president of the 20th century, I had to question not only his brains, but sanity. I wonder if Frank, whose last name (thankfully) escapes my memory and may or may not be having a lucrative career as a lawyer, ever saw "Invictus," and what he'd make of it.
Probably, not much, because like most chunkheads like him, he really believed that Clint Eastwood and Dirty Harry were one and the same. Dirty Harry was an important barometer of American cultural stupidity—say what you will about Clint Eastwood, but he has never stuck me as a fool. He knew that Detective Callahan was not the type of dude with whom you'd want to share afternoon tea, much less run the world. I imagine that he would have probably found many of his Frank-like fans personally distasteful, though, much to his discredit, Eastwood kept taking the paychecks.
In fact, if I were to encounter Frank today, I wouldn't bother arguing with his racist, anti-Semitic worldview. It's just not worth the breath. But he was at least worth a blog entry. The first in a month…
"Racist wolves." That was funny.
I know people like that, unfortunately. You're horrified by them but then somehow you end up meeting their parents and it all makes sad, disturbing sense.