Outrage, umbrage and public indignation
Recent events show that backlash, anger may be defining us
I woke up the other day to the sound of a woman on my radio saying: “I feel so disrespected.”
Sadly it felt normal to hear this — just another incident of personal outrage. I never found out what she was mad about.
But I did spend the day wondering if outrage, defined by the online Merriam Webster Dictionary as “an extremely strong reaction of anger, shock, or indignation,” has become our default shared social value.
Forget Descartes’ elegant “I think, therefore I am.” We have evolved. We are now outraged so often, at least on social media, that in some ways it defines us. We’re pissed, therefore we are.
Take three recent events that prompted societal outrage and ask whether the public pique was, as they say in military bombing circles, “proportional.”
One was a silly Pepsi ad that co-opted a civil-rights protest theme; another was a grossly unacceptable act of brutality against a passenger on United Airlines; and the third was a dangerously idiotic statement on Hitler from Sean Spicer, U.S. President Trump’s beleaguered press secretary.
First there came the famous Kendall Jenner (of the Kardashian family) Pepsi ad, which landed not with a fizz but a thud.
Set to a catchy tune by Skip Marley, the ad appropriated the themes of what many saw as a Back Lives Matter protest, only using a privileged white model, Jenner, who is depicted escaping a modelling shoot to join a diverse group of protesters before she hands a can of soda to a cop in the manner of a ’60s protester handing a flower to a police officer as a gesture of peace.
The ad was tone deaf on many levels. A cheap can of fizzy pop is not going to solve decades of police brutality or inequality.
But the opprobrium that followed was so fierce that one wondered whether no one had heard of advertisers exploiting the mood of the moment. I mean, isn’t that what they do?
“If a black girl tried to give a cop a Pepsi in a protest march, I’m pretty sure he’d give her a Dr Pepper spray in return,” one tweet said, while there were many references to slain civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X saying, gee, if only they’d thought to give a cop a Pepsi.
The ad was quickly yanked. Pepsi apologized, saying “clearly we missed the mark.”
Yet a few days ago, BuzzFeed news reported that a survey of 2,202 people found “sentiment toward the ad varied widely by race: 75 per cent of Latinos and 51 per cent of blacks said the ad made them more favourable toward Pepsi, while just 41per cent of whites said the same.”
Huh? Maybe the best way to counteract that ad was simple ridicule, not enough outrage to blow it out of the water.
The next moment in public outrage occurred after United Airlines tried to bump a passenger, Dr. David Dao, off a flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., to make room for a flight crew.
When Dao was the only one of four selected passengers who refused to go, he was brutally dragged off the plane by an aviation police force. The horrific incident was captured by cellphone video, and the sound of one woman passenger shouting, “Oh my God! Look what you’re doing to him,” should be heard in court if Dao’s lawyers, who held a press conference Thursday, proceed with a lawsuit. I hope they do.
The incident sparked widespread fury, savage sarcasm, a drop in stock value and several attempts at an apology before Oscar Munoz, the CEO of United, finally got it right. “No one should ever be mistreated this way,” said Munoz, who promised a review.
He told ABC’s Good Morning America he felt “ashamed” when he saw the videos. Several members of the aviation authority force have been placed on leave.
The outrage was proportional and necessary. Without it, the company might have gotten away with trying to paint the passenger as “belligerent.”
None of us will ever hear a loudspeaker request to give up our seat on a plane without shuddering.
The third event — which I caught up with after celebrating the Jewish festival of Passover with my family — involved a man who clearly should not hold the job he does, because he’s terrible at it.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer, during a televised briefing, disastrously compared Hitler to Syrian President Bashar Assad, saying that Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”
Of course, millions of Jews were gassed in extermination camps.
Then Spicer got into more trouble, saying Hitler was “not using the gas on his own people.” (Tell that to the German Jews killed by the Nazis.) He then compounded his idiocy by apparently referring to death camps as “Holocaust centres.”
The outrage was justified, but perspective was needed. Spicer was not denying the Holocaust, or necessarily being anti-Semitic. He was as shamefully ignorant of history as his boss.
But his blunder was more of a teaching moment than a chance to demonize him as a Holocaust denier.
The Internet has helped bring all these incidents directly into our lives as we view them on our screens and feel our blood boil.
Yet I wonder if all this outrage is the new opiate of the masses. Does it keep us busy as the powerful and not-well-intentioned move forward with their even more egregious plans?
We will need some of that outrage for more than a Pepsi ad. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson.
The Internet has helped bring all these incidents directly into our lives as we view them on our screens and feel our blood boil