Arguing Over Pickles

Alexandra F. Baldwin

The Misfits banter a lot. It’s what we do. I won’t lift the veil on the behind-the-scenes stuff too much, but there is an enormous amount of back and forth on a wide variety of issues, only a small portion of which makes its way to the website. Quite a bit leaks out on Twitter, but a lot of it stays private.

Those discussions tend to be political or at least “current events” themed. It’s not the most diverse ideological grouping that one could possible establish (I’m pretty sure that I qualify as the liberal, just by virtue of living in Boston and not owning a gun), but there is probably a lot more disagreement than you might think. There was hearty primary debate over candidates (note: the lone Trumpkin threw a tantrum, stormed off and has now gone totally off the rails), there remains debate over how #NeverTrump or #NeverHillary (or both!) we are, and there is always, always, always quite a bit of back and forth over non-candidate issues.

Don’t ask Rex about suspect-killing police robots…CUZ HE’S WRONG!!! (That’s a joke, everyone)

But, a funny thing has happened over the last couple of weeks. We have been absorbed in some intense, layered and very heated discussion on some very NON-political topics. In fact, you may even go so far as to call them somewhat inane. For example:

• Food. I’m amazed at how many people don’t understand that some things taste “good”, and some things are “gross.”
  1. Raisins. There are legitimately people who actually like raisins. And they walk amongst us!!! (@GentlemanRascal seems to be the leading raisin proponent, and honestly, this is like the 12th worst thing about the shit that he likes)
  2. Ketchup. Who on earth doesn’t eat ketchup on hot dogs? @molratty, @jholmsted and @BlazerMc88, that’s who!
  3. Pickles. @Jholmsted, @BlazerMc88 and @molratty love pickles. The rest of us are right.
• Cargo shorts. Even though it is 2016, there are still grown men who argue that cargo shorts are an appropriate thing for an adult male to wear in public. This despite the mountain of scientific evidence (one would assume) refuting that claim. I’m the lone voice of anti-cargo shorts reason in a sea of guys – Rascal, @CDPayne79, @danieltobin, @marcannem96 and @TheHiredMind – who also probably all still wear Zubaz pants
• Y’all. I made a somewhat innocuous comment about Southerners using “y’all” to refer to a single person, not thinking that was a particularly controversial subject. Oh, Calcutta was I wrong about that! Not only do the Texans (@Marcannem96, @BlazerMc88, J.R.) and the Alabaman (@lunaticrex) disagree with the assertion that Southerners do, in fact, use “y’all” in the singular, they are viscerally angered at the suggestion! Extensive Twitter polling has confirmed that Southerners do, in fact, use “y’all” in the singular, but they still refuse to acknowledge the truth.
• SEC football. This is intense enough that I feel the need to actually adopt an SEC team so that I can join the conversation. Having come from the obviously superior Pac-12, this is hard for me, but I am going to claim the Florida Gators and rely on @ladylibertas76 to keep me up to speed!
• Flip-Flops. The newest Misfit (@molratty) is a staunch anti-flip-flopper, for both men and women. I wear flip-flops to walk to work, and I wear them out in the summer a lot. @LunaticRex is a 100% flip-flop wearer.  Most of the rest fall somewhere in between, although we agree that platform flip-flops are just plain stupid. Also, we’re not sure that Rascal actually knows how to wear flip flops. He may need some lessons.

Lost in the fun of this nonsense is, what I think, a serious underlying problem: none of us really want to talk about politics. It’s simply too depressing. Here we are, the richest, most advanced society in the history of the world, and out of 350 million people, we have decided that our leader will be either a Cheeto-hued buffoon or a decrepit rape-apologist.

Come November, we are going to elect an aged, uninspired, crooked hack with a lifetime of high-profile, undistinguished public service and despicable personal behavior. She’s got a stale and dated worldview, a seventh-grader's grasp of economics and precious few principles to which she has held firm throughout her political career. And that is the first logical thing that voters have done this year!!! Her opponent, of course, is a morally (and often financially) bankrupt narcissistic mythomaniac with a seventh-grader's grasp of, well, pretty much everything (other than, of course, tapping into the larger-than-assumed vein of rank bigotry flowing through the working class).

Talking about politics these days just isn’t fun. It is impossible to have a discussion without acknowledging the embarrassing state of the American electorate. Sure, we can blame the parties and the media and the establishment and whatever other boogeyman we can think of, but the real truth is that we got these two because they are the ones that the voters chose. And that is a terrible, terrible, thought.

So, we’re tackling some alternative issues instead. Real, important issues, like carrot cake (for the record, I hold that carrot cake was rendered obsolete on the day that the technology first existed to put cream cheese frosting onto red velvet cake.)

Just don’t mention Don McClean.