Not Cool: The Hipster Elite And Their War On You, by Greg Gutfeld

[Note: This book was provided free of charge by Blogging For Books/Crown Forum in exchange for an honest review.]

At its heart, this is a book about encouraging its reader to be good and to note care about the self-appointed and self-destructive purveyors of a leftist elite agenda. Among the most startling insights to someone who is a fellow and critical observer of the hipster elite [1] is the fact that the hipster obsession with cool is in fact a self-defeated attempt at distancing to create a sense of irony and detachment and to deliberately avoid showing effort in an area where one believes oneself overmatched. It springs, not surprisingly from black culture and the beat culture of the 1950’s, and represents a sullen response to feelings of inadequacy, posing in such a fashion that one makes the successful and the hardworking envious of the popularity and success with women that one gets by insulting hard work and labeling it as uncool.

This book has, in general, a take-no-prisoners approach. Over and over again it demonstrates the double standards and hypocrisy of those who consider themselves cool, where the author makes fun of himself in cutting and witty remarks that only serve to embarrass those he is talking about even further. Nor does the author merely speak in generalities; he names names and provides telling details that demonstrate careful research and a zest for pointed criticism. Those who are written about in these pages as cultural elites are taken down a few notches, often with well-placed commentary about their popularity and hypocrisy and general uselessness to society. The author attempts to be a cultural arbiter himself, perhaps in a funny or ironic way, but he also just as clearly makes some sound points about the damage that has resulted in society in insulting what is good and praising what is evil.

This book encourages its readers to think for themselves, to reject fashionable nonsense, to respect parents and work hard and show compassion on others without seeing government as an atm with no spending limit. It praises rationality while recognizing the irrationality of people, and also comments painfully on some areas of personal experience. As someone who grew up in the South, without ever having fit in there, I have been subject to the “Deliverance” jokes with dueling banjos and attempts at witty insults discussed in this book’s chapter on why hipsters hate the South. Although the author’s praise of “free radicals,” namely those who are free thinkers without being doctrinaire liberals, is a bit defective on account of the fact that the author is at best an agnostic libertarian, being the sort of person who has no interest in micromanaging the lives of others, I vastly prefer his attitude to those whom he criticizes for their immense hypocrisy. The criticism is harsh, but also just, and often funny, as long as one is not the subject of the ridicule.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/01/27/the-irony-of-hipsterdom/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/agents-of-corruption-2/