Ourland

Hello, I’m an NPR Liberal. I hope you’re having a good day despite all the craziness going on. Things are just insane right now, what with the ongoing backslide into authoritarianism and all. I’ve hit a bit of a rough patch in my personal life, too: my Prius was demolished in a collision with an F-150, and I used the insurance money to buy a Hyundai Accent. The Accent doesn’t have Bluetooth, so I listen to FM radio, which means I listen to NPR, which makes me an NPR Liberal. Hello again. 

Let me tell you some things about myself: I refuse to ask for paper bags at the grocery store because I don’t want to burden the cashier. This racks me with guilt, because not only am I being a coward, but my cowardice is destroying the Earth, vis-à-vis those plastic bags suffocating baby seals, dolphins, etc. I read somewhere, probably in The New Yorker, that if we continue using plastic bags at our current rate, every inch of the earth will be covered in a 50-foot layer of plastic within five years. We’ll all be blindly flailing around in an infinite plastic bag ocean, thinking to ourselves I should’ve just asked for paper, or at least remembered to grab the reusable ones from the closet by the front door.

One of my neighbors is a Fox News conservative: his television blares at all hours of the night, media ghouls with smug faces yammering about how transgenders are conducting seance-orgies in third-world countries like Chicago while plotting America’s demise.

Yesterday I listened to a 30-minute NPR segment about Wisconsin cheese, and even though my eyes glazed over a couple of times, I felt compelled to finish it because of the recent funding cuts. I hear about Trump pardoning every single J6 rioter and sigh. One of my neighbors is a Fox News conservative: his television blares at all hours of the night, media ghouls with smug faces yammering about how transgenders are conducting seance-orgies in third-world countries like Chicago while plotting America’s demise. When this neighbor and I see each other in the front yard, we talk about the weather, and I get a little sweaty. I make vague dinner plans with our other neighbors, fellow NPR Liberals; we never have dinner together. 

I don’t understand jazz, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I feel an irrational amount of guilt for having an SUV as a second vehicle. I hear about Trump blowing up boats in the Caribbean, and my sigh has a little more oomph to it. I listen to NPR begging for donations and think to myself “I should donate.” I never donate. My new (to me) Accent started smoking under the hood the other day, so I briefly considered asking my Fox News neighbor for help, because based on stereotypes, he probably understands cars. Then I thought about the resulting dampness in my pits, and decided to relisten to an archived episode of Radiolab while catching up on laundry. I hear about ICE raiding an entire apartment complex in the middle of the night, detaining children and American citizens, and sigh so hard I shit my pants. 

I guess the guys and gals at The New Yorker caught wind that I was an NPR Liberal, because they started sending me subscription offers. Every couple of months I’d get a letter saying “you know you want this: only $145 for a year, 7,000-percent off the cover price,” but I ignored them because even though The New Yorker is a fine magazine, $145 was too expensive for a guy with a sedan that could explode at any moment. Then, after stonewalling them for months, I received a letter saying: “fine, you win. Here’s a year for $42.” I instantly subscribed, and now I’m not only an NPR Liberal, but a New Yorker subscriber, which makes me a Super Liberal and unlocks special incentives available only to Super Liberals, like a monthly ration of raw organic sheep butter from the local co-op. Thankfully, the co-op doesn’t offer plastic bags, so I’m not triggered by my dystopian plastic ocean nightmare when I walk in the store, which, by the way, has an ambient smell of body odor I don’t find entirely off-putting. Also, sheep butter is really bad, so my fridge is overflowing with the stuff. If you’d like some, give me your address and I’ll gladly send you a lot of it.

The thing I didn’t realize about The New Yorker is that it publishes 46 issues per year. This means that basically every sixth time I open my mailbox, I find the best magazine in the world staring me in the face, imploring me to read it, quickly, before the next one arrives. This is great, though! How cool is it that I’m able to access such a wealth of information sent directly to my front door, not once per month, like most sane magazines, but 46 freaking times, all for the price of the cocktail of streaming services that I pay for but rarely use any more because I spend my free time speed-reading issues of The New Yorker to stay ahead of the next edition, which is perpetually in transit. I have abandoned the idea of ever reading a book again; I’m too busy half-distractedly skimming articles like “The Erotics of Noreen Simpson” and “A Dark Ecologist Warns Against Hope” while side-eyeing my dog as he noisily licks himself on the living room floor.

How cool is it that I’m able to access such a wealth of information sent directly to my front door, not once per month, like most sane magazines, but 46 freaking times, all for the price of the cocktail of streaming services that I pay for but rarely use any more because I spend my free time speed-reading issues of The New Yorker to stay ahead of the next edition, which is perpetually in transit.

I guess the folks at Harper’s Magazine heard I was a Super Liberal and decided I’d probably enjoy their publication as well. Harper’s is basically The New Yorker for people who don’t routinely eat caviar, so when they sent me one of those little postcards offering a two-year subscription for $35, I took the bait. Now I’ve officially reached Super Ultra Liberal status, which unlocks the next tier of progressive perks, the most devastating being a weekly 45-minute phone sex session with Bernie Sanders (mandatory) in which he croaks erotic phrases like “Take that universal healthcare, ya dirty little hoor” and “Oh my Gahd, you’re sticking it to those billionaires so hahd” directly into my earhole until I feel slightly aroused, but mostly just nauseous. Being a liberal is the best.

So here I sit, New Yorkers piling up on my coffee table, my fridge overflowing with moldy sheep butter. I consider, in a fleeting moment of curiosity, what life might be like as a Fox News conservative. Perhaps that would be a better existence; maybe, at least, I’d figure out what’s causing my Accent to smoke. I flip on the TV to see what I’ve been missing, and over the course of an intense multi-day brownout, watch Greg Gutfeld claim that conservatives should repurpose the word “Nazi” as a positive thing, Jesse Watters say that someone should consider bombing the UN, and Donald Trump state that he “couldn’t care less” about political violence originating from the right. After snapping out of my stupor, I notice that my brain feels inflamed, having been pumped full of anti-woke hormones like a lobotomized cow fattened for slaughter. It takes several days of post-brownout New Yorker therapy (“The Ministry of Joyce McDonald’s Sculptures,” and that sort of thing) to bring my mind back to relative stasis, and when my equilibrium returns, I decide to retain my status as a Super Ultra Liberal, at least for now. 

I’ve officially reached Super Ultra Liberal status, which unlocks the next tier of progressive perks, the most devastating being a weekly 45-minute phone sex session with Bernie Sanders (mandatory) in which he croaks erotic phrases like “Take that universal healthcare, ya dirty little hoor” directly into my earhole.

I’ll continue to struggle with many basic things because it is in my NPR Liberal nature. The next time I go to the grocery store and forget to bring reusable bags, I’ll still be too neutered with fear to ask for paper. I’ll continue to feel soul-spanking shame for having a second vehicle that gets ≤ 20 miles to the gallon. Yet all of this generalized anxiety will be made tolerable by the fact that, when I get home, I’ll have the privilege of nervously awaiting my mandatory late-night call from Senator Sanders, sex icon, who’ll phlegmily wheeze: “Mmmm, I’m gonna make prescription drug prices dirt cheap for yew” right into my earhole, lifting me into that familiar state of nauseous arousal. Once again, I am saved. Liberalism may be hell, but it’s my hell.