Are We All Tucker Max Now?
Walter Hudson has a post at the PJ Lifestyle entitled “American Immaturity: How We Grow Up After We Grow Old” that caught my eye. He describes the antics and life of Tucker Max to illustrate how some people never grow up until sometimes it’s too late and relates it to our current political climate:
At the age of thirty-five, the author of such literary classics as I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and Assholes Finish First has had something of an epiphany regarding the licentious lifestyle which informed his New York Times-bestselling tomes. As the years have worn on and life taken its toll, Tucker Max has conceded that copious sex and booze do not lead to happiness.
Hudon points out that our society is similar to the immaturity of a Tucker Max:
It is bad enough when an individual refuses to mature. Consider the consequences of an entire nation intent on fantasy. Mark Steyn highlights the fact that President Obama’s currently proposed budget places the national debt on track to reach 900% of GDP by 2075. Are there any grown-ups among us prepared to deal with this reality?
The capacity of Americans to mature will determine whether or not we pull out of our cultural and economic nosedive and restore a republic governed by just laws which protect individual rights. It is the choice and capacity to acknowledge the requirements of life, to concede such axioms as “money doesn’t grow on trees,” which enable mature adults to act productively in pursuit of their own happiness. Absent that, misery is inevitable.
Here is the problem: there is no incentive to grow up anymore. Those people who are mature, working and “playing by the rules” are footing the bill by paying ever more in taxes and being bombarded by regulations while the Tucker Maxes of the world are collecting entitlements and skipping out on that darn grown-up old tax thing. Our political class is running the country at this point for the benefit of those who are willing to act like (the old) Tucker Max in his heyday. The public goes along with this more or less by agreeing that “taxing the rich” and government freebies are the norm. Until the incentives for acting like the more mature Tucker Max are put in place, we will see more Tucker Maxes among us, not fewer.
I recently saw the Beer in Hell movie. About six of us, me and five younger people. The owner of the DVD asked if I liked it and I said I couldn’t find one redeemable thing about him and he’d done nothing worth admiration. ‘I think so.’ OK, what? Down the road to sulking that went.
Unfortunate that instead of making your own wealth, so many see “getting way with” as the trait worth admiring. It’s not new, but there seems to be more of it.
Meh. Tucker Max has commercialized being an “Immature Asshole®”. He can’t change without destroying his brand.
While 35+ is a little old for his shtick, he’ll probably get away with it until his hairline recedes a little further.
Tucker Max has conceded that copious sex and booze do not lead to happiness.
Using an excessive lifestyle as an example of anything but excess is a fool’s errand. It’s what led Augustine and countless others to turn from hedonism to asceticism–two sides of the same fanatical coin–with few real lessons for those of us who live in the middle. Instead we get bombastic moralistic messages from religion and nanny state government from those in power (which of course doesn’t apply to them.)
Asceticism may be radical, but it is effective. It’s not for everybody, but it is inspiring.
Indeed.
That’s why Orthodox Christianity recommends a certain amount of asceticism for all of the faithful, including laypeople.
There’s that word again, radical. What does it mean? It has become a word to describe a “good” by which to CHANGE the world. The drum and bugle corps (core) of the believers in the word certainly did change the West- whether those to be changed wanted it or not. Changed BACK to pre-18th century traditional models of empire in the West and current societies in Asia and Africa. As in royal court, divine rights of kings, fealty to lords, obedience to tribal elders. Change words and their meanings and you Change the world, a la Rudyard Kipling/G.Orwell/ R. Conquest etal. In The Beginning Was the Word, even for secular atheists/left-wingers.
The MOST radical act in the history of the world was the founding of the USA as Contitutional Republic with Rights in Law for ordinary, common people. Rights ensured by SELF-governing citizens. This worked to impel those common people to develop the most successful, richest- bringing the greatest good to the greatest number, fairest, most generous society in history. Hated and envied by soi-disant
betters, sophisticated European wannabees, who sniff-poo those common people. As in “only the little people pay taxes”.
The problem is not a lack of asceticism. Its a lack of opportunity. All of the complaints we here about lazy young men today were uttered 20 years ago during the early 90′s recession. Remember the complains about those Gen-X slackers? When the internet was invented and the economy got better. Gen-X slackers turned into start-up entrepreneurs. Then, you had people complain about the opposite problem:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-organization-kid/2164/
It seems someone thought those Gen-X slackers were working too hard.
Its really all about opportunity.
Neither Helen nor myself are advocating asceticism. Dealing with reality as such does not require or condone self-denial. The standard for morality is objective and rational. Consistent binge drinking and copious sex with random partners is clearly unhealthy. Acknowledging that is not a prescription to live the life of a monk.
Not to disagree with you at all but I notice in Joe’s post above and yours a familiar and useless refrain. Joe points out Augustine and countless others who have seen the errors of their ways. Its always after they’ve had their run at those ways for a good, long spell. Wisened thought they are they never grasp the notion that their expectations that the ratio of those who would heed their advice to those who won’t isn’t going to change much and… that they, themselves are the proof.
Is “binge drinking and copious sex” irrational for a twenty-something male? Perhaps the binge drinking but what incentive does a young man have for settling down until he reaches his 30s? We don’t ask the same of young women. If there is anything to be learned from the Sandra Fluke/Rush Limbaugh saga it’s that all women now accept the right to sleep with whomever they chose as above question. You cannot call a slut a slut. So why condemn Tucker Max for his behavior? He is just another man trying to make his way in this new milieu.
“the Sandra Fluke/Rush Limbaugh saga”.
Sandra Fluke lied in her testimony before Congress. I think I can prove it.
Let’s do some basic math, back in my youth, girls had 28 day menstrual cycles, they were basically out of the sex business for about 5 days each during their period. Assuming a 28 day cycle that’s 13 periods per year,,, times 5 days per cycle = 65 days per year the girl’s sex shop is closed. That leaves 300 days per year Sandra could likely be having recreational sex.
Sandra also testified before Congress that her cost per year for contraception was $1000.00 per year, (that’s assuming her boyfriends, and I think that’s plural, showed up every time without protection), Trojans cost about a dollar each. I’m not the best mathematician in the world but even I can figure out that Sandra is having recreational sex at least three times a day to rack up that kind of cost.
I have no doubt where Rush came up with his “slut” comment. I don’t think Rush should be apologizing to anyone for his comments.
You clearly don’t get it. “Consistent binge drinking and copious sex with random partners is clearly unhealthy.” No shit Sherlock. Like preachers of all stripes, you state the blindingly obvious and then use extreme examples of behavior as some sort of “moral” lesson. It’s straw man morality; more than a bit like writing an article like “what mass murderers can teach us.”
Joe: It strikes me that it’s YOU that isn’t getting it.
The article suggests that large parts of society have refused to grow up and are living excessively. They suggest we would be better off if a larger percentage of our society grew up and stopped living excessively.
You agree that living excessively is obviously bad, but you try to change the subject as to whether excessive behavior proves anything about non-excessive behavior.
I’ll grant you that alcoholism does not prove that a glass of wine now and then is harmful. Let’s note in passing that this is a straw man you’ve set up since no such claims were made in the original article.
But none of that has anything to do with the argument being advanced. Now you may disagree with that argument as well, but we’d all at least appreciate if you’d stay on topic.
And most people don’t envy or idolize mass murderers, and those that do are regarded as disturbed or worse, not treated as normal.
there are limits. they are noted in his book. He got thrown out of a strip club in Austin, Texas. The strip club threw him out. Then the Austin Police Department arrested him. That’s his arrest sign picture, in the Walter Hudson post.
The Yellow Rose is a strip club, not a church. He managed to go too far there- and got thrown out. It was the fraternities at UT that let him get away with extraordinarily licentious behavior. The police in Austin regularly deal with drunken crowds on Sixth Street, several music festivals, South by Southwest- which takes over the central city, Eeyore’s birthday party- which is as hippy-tastic as it sounds- and has the lowest murder rates of any city in the United States. It might have gone up when Katrina victims moved in. The city absorbs about 1,000 new people a week. Few murders, little dirt, lots of creative sorts—-how is this the fall of western civilization?
The baby boom:80% haven’t saved enough for retirement. That’s an entirely different problem than post-boomers, who were raised on the notion that there isn’t going to be any Social Security when they retire.
I spent the day today at ExploreUT. When I talked to students- they were trying to get their grades up enough to apply to the highly, highly prestigious business school, trying to get into the accounting school, in the accounting program so they could join the FBI, talking about their future grandchildren attending UTA, studying for calculus tests, writing plays for drama classes not graded on a curve, joining student organizations that do publication quality scientific research. Whatever else they are- they aren’t the end of western civ. These kids were lovely, wonderful, warm, gracious…there was a waiting list to volunteer to do this, in the first place. I met a young lady who was disappointed that she didn’t get the greeter job- getting up at 6am to set up, then start greeting bus-loads of children from all over.
Tucker Max is a lawyer. We might as well say law school breeds sexual reprobates, and list off Mr Instapundit’s links to sexual items, as smear the young college students of today. They can be charming, decent,studious, helpful, lovely people.
The old vs young arguments are a part of that individual and social immaturity the author was talking about. What the argument boils down to is: ‘Did, too!” Did, not!’ …ad infinitum.
The question isn’t which demographic to blame for our problems. The question is: How do we fix it w/o smashing the entire edifice?
The problem is not the past (Tucker Max’s behavior), and it’s not the present (the wide range of experiences available in college towns). The problem is that the past and present are writing checks that the future (falling production, greater consumption) CANNOT cash. It is mathematically impossible to cover all of the debts that are being incurred now. That doesn’t even take into account human nature, which usually takes the form of “if you’re only going to pretend to pay me, then I’m only going to pretend to work.” Worse yet, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of plan for dealing with the day when our creditors get tired of seeing their hard-earned go up in the smoke of instant gratification, with no way for us to pay them back. At some point (sooner, not later) they’re simply going to take their credit and walk away. At which point those of us left aboard go down with the ship.
The “old farts,” the “grown-ups,” those pay the bills NOW, are telling the free-spenders that they will NOT be able to pay the bills tomorrow. There’s been no change in behavior though, other than the occasional “lighten up, live fast, die young” response.
For the time being, we’re obliged to save your own necks along with our own. God help us when that’s no longer the case.
honestly, I’m kind of stuck here. I’m not understanding what you are railing about. In general, yes. In particular, no.
Tucker Max set up a simple, crude website while he was in law school. he had attended a prestigious university, and had gotten good grades, enough to get himself into law school. While in law school, he set up a website as a joke, with an application to have sex with him. Since this was the era of websites about pictures of my cat, and dishcloth patterns, and star trek fan sites, and so on, his was sort of the dirty joke version of a site. He started getting hits. He took the girls up on their offers.
He finished law school. He ran a profitable resort bar, he worked in his father’s restaurant, he took an internship at a California law firm. He wrote about all of his experiences. and, finally, he started writing really good prose pieces. His friends encouraged him to continue writing. He got an agent. He wrote best-selling essay books about his misadventures. He went on raucous book tours. He set up the financing for a b-list film, and wrote the script. The film did poorly at the theatre, but seems to be owned in dvd by every guy I know. His investors will make their money back, eventually. they might already be in the black.
He was working, successfully, in all sorts of media. He was paying taxes every step of the way. We might not like the subject. But- I have an english anthology that has the essay “catching coneys” from elizabethan times, advice from a grifter. The scholars at uni in the middle ages were famously hound-dogs, scummy lice, bohemians. it’s not even a new genre.
One thing TM is not doing is grifting- he’s pretty straightforward about being a total hound-dog. He’s not even a gigolo. He’s just a carnival ride. Some of the time he’s a sex therapist- women would use him after they’d been raped, to be in control of the situation. Would you prefer that a writer interview him and the writer get jazzed up about his tragic life? That’s pretty much every essay in Esquire- scribes getting jazzed up about real men’s exploits. What if the man could write the essay himself?
Tucker Max was the child of an acrimonious divorce. The one thing any research supports is that children of divorce mature at an exponentially slower rate than other people. TM is practically a poster-child for Judith Wallerstein’s work. Within his cohort- he’s perfectly understandable. Outside of that….
And again, he was working, and paying taxes, probably from the time he was 16 years old. High tax rates- he’s very successful at what he does. He might not be as materially succesful now, now that he’s hanging out and going to therapy four days a week.
80% of the baby boom has not enough to retire. I really have no sympathy for a generation, that burned down 1/3 of its fields, and now gripes there is not enough grain. 1/3 of all pregnancies, across all classes, were aborted, during the seventies. Adding insult to injury, this is also the decade that brought us horror films about demonic children, and then demonic teens.
It’s no joke that the revolting older grandparents in Judd Apatow productions are recommending abortion ” You can get rid of this one, and have a real baby later” advises the grandmother in Knocked Up. The loser’s dad tells him- “you’re the best thing that ever happened to me” and the loser slowly uses his skills to build a life for his baby-mama and his child. This movie is practically an anthem for some of my friends- it’s the movie that is the story of their life.
The generations that lived during the Great Bubonic Plague, where 1/3 of all people died, were not noted for long-term planning, or sober virtuousness. We’re in the same position. We’ve all seen the book of hours showing peasants laboring in the fields harvesting grain. During the plague years, there were the same sort of illustrations of peeping toms, adulterers in hot tubs made of wooden barrels, and so on.
And, frankly, having done math problems in high school about how long until a missile from the soviet union hits us ( minutes) for one, and then, how many years until social security blows up- usually, right about when the post-boomers retire- about all I look on social security as, right now, is protection money that keeps my paid off current old relatives far, far away from me.
And, TM is growing up. He’s doing it in public. He’s trying to help other people- women in tight tank-tops, mostly. But still- the girlfriend in therapy? Is an ER nurse, which is in short supply in Central Texas. She can move about, so we can assume she’s good at what she does. She’s paying taxes on a mid-five figure job. How is she the end of western civilization?
Boomers loved themselves because they were hedonists who were going to correct all the mistakes their parents made. Post-Boomers love themselves because they’re the new grownups who are going to correct all the mistakes their parents made. It’s hard to decide which generation is more deluded.
whatever delusions Tucker Max suffered from, correcting the mistakes of the baby boom is not one of them. Nor is society-wide resurrection via OWS. Societal regeneration is the hobby of boomers and OWS-types. Those are the global thinkers. TM has about an eight inch length, however many inches circumference, area of focus. Now that he’s concerned about therapy- add in his brain.
What I like about the people here on PJM is that they are taking their own single perspective, or offering options. Bill Whittle is producing two films. He’s not collaring the whole entertainment complex. Mr Klavan is writing hard-boiled fiction, and writing movies. He’s not dictating to anyone what they are required to watch. Mr Kimball is giving an arts education. Mr Simon is show-casing everyone’s talents-which is harder than it looks- and offering up his own observations. He’s not forcing anything.
I’ve read Tucker Max’s first book. He worked, he learned to write essays, he built an online business. He gives very good advice about writing. He’s very honest about his many, many shortcomings. There isn’t bluster. There’s braggadacio, there’s coarseness, but there isn’t lying, and there isn’t projection. He’s not trying to remake society in his image.
I don’t think that anyone who has led a life even close to him- work, party, study, work- is messianically nuts. I’m wondering, honestly, where are Barack’s old girlfriends. There’s a chilliness there. He wants to fundamentally transform the US. That’s way, way different than TM.
The article defamed college students in general. I spent Saturday swimming in college students, at the largest open house a university throws, on the flagship campus of Texas. The kids were uniformly decent, hard-working, studious,kind, empathetic, enthusiastic people. Two students in biology plugged into texting on their cell-phones were the only weak spots. High school students bussed in from all over Texas, some with four and six hour rides to get there, were taking tours, trying to figure out what was on offer at the school. They were checking that their religious denomination had a chapel near the school. The university is practically ringed with fine churches. There are others, as well.
There was one giant display about Palestine. There was one table of secular society students. And nobody, and I mean nobody, paid attention to either one. While the tables for engineering, accounting, business, chemistry, biology, astronomy, pre-med, were crowded, lines with waiting periods nearing an hour.
I had picked up a pizza the night before. The girl running the register was upset that she hadn’t made the list to set up in the morning. She is working her way through school at the pizza parlor. She tells me about her tests, each week. Her co-workers have said ” I expect to have a decent life b/c I have a good work ethic and I am a good worker.” One guy said that right in front of my son. You don’t think I don’t bless him, each night, in prayers? He made my life as a parent easier, by being himself. The pizza parlor manager went back to finish his degree to be a police officer. He’s engaged to be married.
A bar-fly is not representative of America. It might have been representative before Prohibition. Then, about 1/4 of all households reported problems from excess alcohol.
And, these kids aren’t fighting with their forefathers. They spoke well of their parents, they were inspired by their sisters, by their cousins, by their pastors.
TM is a lot of things. He was a student who learned to code. He was a hard worker in the restaurant field. Anthony Bourdain writes about the louche morals of food service workers in his books, but we don’t take him as emblematic.
the boomers think collectively. the generations before or after certainly don’t.
and yes, I would be horrified if my daughter showed all the sense of a deluded flea if she came home prattling on about the virtues of such a total hound-dog.
I’m friends with a few guys like that. They really are damaged human beings. I don’t think they can get married in the first place. TM willingly subjecting himself to therapy is really commendable, from where I’m standing. He needs it.
My husband has friends like that. I tell him he’s around to keep my daughter safe from guys like that. We tell her brothers they have to protect her. It’s kind of odd, explaining to preteen boys that their sister loves them, even when they are jerks to her, and that she’ll be like that with other guys, so they need to use their jerk skills to protect her. And they get what we’re saying.
It’s like the movie American Pie, which was that last evidence of the end of western civilization. The kids were from materially succesful families, they were involved in extra-curricular activities, they were studying for tests, they were headed to college, they had loyal friends. So, they were also focused on getting laid. Two of the couples eventually ended up committed, if not married.
Tucker Max has been hard-working his whole life. He works hard at mentally challenging subjects. and then he challenges his body( work hard, play hard is the catch-phrase) on weekends. Shouldn’t we be more worried about people who don’t learn, don’t learn new skills, don’t attend school, don’t study, don’t work, don’t have any get up and go at all? Lazying around on the couch, smoking pot and skipping school- like, you know, the remarkably unprepossessing young teens next door, or the unemployed guys loitering around the playground at the section 8 housing project next block over? or the methadone addicted hepatitis patients on the full government dole?
As the religion of secular humanism has become the world religion, especially in the West, and that form of worship – self-worship – has corrupted all objective definition in language…I’m willing to bet that no can give me a generally accepted standard of what “growing up” even means. The female future lawyers at Georgetown would certainly have different a definition than I have I suspect. It appears that they are more powerful than Rush (his hot new squeeze undoubtedly has him thoroughly kitty-whipped)and considering a woman’s advantages over men now, female layers will shortly be running this country, so it is time for males to knuckle-under and define their world through their emotions as doing otherwise no longer seems possible, or even legal. “Give in to the dark side, Luke…”
That’s all good, but the incentive to mature needs to be more than twisted old Mandarins shaking their fist at youths and shouting, “You kids have no values!”
Offer them beneficial power-sharing/mentor arrangements. Something more valuable than “Fetch me a coffee, kid, and I’ll give you a job reference…”
“Offer them beneficial power-sharing/mentor arrangements.”
What makes you think that those who deserve that arrangement aren’t getting it? Not everyone does, you know.
I ran a stunt group for years with a hundred plus members. I certainly didn’t offer all members “power/mentor arrangements”. Why? Not enough time first, which made me limit those relationships to the members who showed an aptitude, the necessary talents and followed the rules. The others? They got to perform (job), but they didn’t get the lead spots. Those who did *earned* the positions. Those who joined and practiced saw clearly that those people were the best for those roles.
Here’s the intelligent “arrangement” I suggest. You say to the new recruit “I will share power and I will provide guidance once you’ve shown me I can trust you and that you’re worth my time”.
Oh horror, you’re making the new person prove themselves and imply they don’t already possess value? That’s right, I am. Because I’ve yet to see that value and I’m not so stupid as to think that all people have it. (We’re talking work value, not the value of being a human which I think many, *many* people conflate as you did in your post.)
I’m the one with the organization I built, I’m the one whose name is on the production on display, I’m the one responsible for all injuries and I’m the one who deals with the feds. Yessir, *I* and only I get to determine how to run things. And what *that* means, my friend, is I get to determine the things I offer for the job I have that needs doing.
It sounds like you had the right idea then. I think the main problem is college right now. People would grow up if they weren’t able to hide in school for so long.
Technology also plays a role. Business has become so efficient that there’s simply no work left to do. Oh well.
“Offer them beneficial power-sharing/mentor arrangements.”
What makes you think that those who deserve that arrangement aren’t getting it? Not everyone does, you know.
In fact, I’d say the source of the problem is that we are giving power to nearly everyone, whether they deserve it or not. That’s what allows the taker class (the Tucker class?) to force the prodcutive classes to fund their entitlements. Part of the attraction of being responsible is supposed to be that you have more say in your life, but instead you’re just another host for the parasites to leech off of.
Maturity has to be beaten into us, one way or another. that’s what parents are for. Laxking such a resource, life will do the duty eventually.
Those who have had maturity beaten into them later in life, by life, are more cognizent of the process and its pratfalls if only because, having reached an age capable of conceptual thought, they are able to analyze the process. If beaten into you by parents it seems more a part of one’s nature.
See how vearings are wonderful! j/k
Oh my. “Vearings” should be “beatings”.
“Here is the problem: there is no incentive to grow up anymore. Those people who are mature, working and “playing by the rules” are footing the bill by paying ever more in taxes and being bombarded by regulations while the Tucker Maxes of the world are collecting entitlements and skipping out on that darn grown-up old tax thing.”
Replace Tucker Max with Sandra Fluke. I bet that Tucker has paid a lot more in tax than Sandra.
Tucker Max has been a taxpayer his entire working life, which started at 16. He worked through law school. Not make-work stuff- he ran a succesful resort bar. He worked at his father’s restaurant company. He worked at a law firm. he also financed a movie, and wrote a script. he wrote two best-selling novels. He’s in the high-tax bracket. He’s been in it. He will probably continue to be in it.
His girlfriend is an ER nurse. She’s making a mid-five figure salary, if my nurse friends are any indicator. She’s paying taxes. They aren’t married, so no marriage bump. No kids, no child-tax credits. I don’t know if he’s renting, or if he owns. They shop at the hardware store, to maintain the house. So- sales taxes in Travis County- which are 8 and a quarter percent, the highest allowed by law in Texas.
When half the people don’t pay taxes and the other half does the US is on a slippery slope to self destruction, slowly but surely. The Obama regime is set
upon the destruction of the US and are going to succeed. Obama is the first anti-American, anti-Semitic president.
It’s all part of the unraveling of society as we know it due to increasing technology. Growing up and getting a job or trade for a male use to be the ticket to achieving autonomy, mastery and purpose–the fundamentals of pride in a man. Now getting a job means becoming George Jetson, stuck an a dystopic sterile work environment and rearranging pixels on a screen in certain patterns as to sustain and grow the wealth and power of the money classes. Never before in society has a man been more alienated from the goals and purposes of his labor, with nothing but a number on a checking account direct deposit to show at the end of the week.
If you want to fix manhood, fix work. Fix the economy. Fix society. There are only several paths society can go, Distributism with “everyone eating from his own vine and every one from his own fig tree”, mass slavery and dependancy punctuated by civil war, or just plain chaos and collapse. It all depends on whether we use our technology to help people be more independent and decentralized, or as a tool to enslave the many to fulfill the desires and promote the interests of the few.
Tucker Max writes admiringly about the oil-field workers he was invited to stay with. He writes about men shooting guns. He writes about restaurant workers. He writes about soldiers. He writes about men.
TheAbstractor
“It’s all part of the unraveling of society as we know it due to increasing technology.”
I utterly reject that. Being a Luddite doesn’t suddenly make one a good guy who doesn’t see women as simply a list of fucks to do and then cross off. Those guys have always been around and lesser saps who can’t work up the introspection to be satisfied with self will always admire them. That doesn’t mean they’re any more respectable.
I was alive and remember when the very first transistor radio was sold. Amazing, *three* transistors! Those jackasses abounded in those times too and I would hazard to say that there is no time in history, down unto the living in grass huts stage, that you will not find those creeps.
“It all depends on whether we use our technology to help people be more independent and decentralized, or as a tool to enslave the many to fulfill the desires and promote the interests of the few.”
I see that you actually agree with me that it’s not the tech itself, so the sentence I quoted doesn’t make sense to me.
Ali, I have no doubt TM grown is not TM younger. The criticism leveled here is against TM younger. Not that he didn’t pay taxes and work, but that he treated his fellow humans, including his supposed best friends, as disposable amusement ride tickets. Do you really want to try to defend the huge list of shit he dumped on his friends in Beer? I would have shot the son of a bitch. I don’t care if he changed later, he did a shit-load of damage to others in getting to his nice, comfortable later.
oh,he’s a total jack-ass. total!
He’s just not one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. He’s a douche-bag writer. Norman Mailer was a worse human being, and he dragged his wife into his messes. for one. Stephen King spent 10? 20? years being a total drug addict, alcoholic, and somehow his wife still loves him.
He’s got a near PSA about how testing for chlamydia is totally painful- they stick a sample swabber down your….anyway, he’s honest about it being totally painful and gross. That beats the living daylights out of “all my friends have herpes and it’s no big deal” Susie Bright. She’s freaky.
He’s very, very, very honest about being a total jerk. He’s not asking for empathy. Bookstores right now are awash in books about tender, gentle, sensitive vegan book editors. TM has written, in memoir format, a “rake’s progress.” it’s got more bones than it looks like it has.
He’s a jerk. Most college kids I meet are charming, hard-working, decent kids. It’s not fair to paint them with his brush.
Most “boomers” I have met are also charming, hard-working, decent folks. Is it fair to paint them all with the same brush?
What seems really cool at the age of 25 gets pretty pathetic by the age of 45.
Riiiight. That is why all those 45 year old men still wish they were 25.
‘Experience keeps a hard school; She gives the test first, and the lesson after.’
America is about to get schooled, and performance will prove competence, to lead
and to rule.
My only observation is that ‘childhood’ has pretty much traditionally lasted about 1/3 of the expected lifespan. A couple of hundred years ago when life expectancy was around 45 young men got married and had jobs at age 15 and young women married at 14 or 15.
In the mid-20th century, as life expectancy pushed up to 65, marriage and jobs happened at 19-21 or so.
Today, life expectancy is realistically 85-90. Why not expect ‘childhood’ [or at least delayed adulthood] last until at least 30 on average?
The problem with that is what does society need in order to function? People need their own children and other people’s children to continue running society when they’re to old to do so. Fertility starts dropping around 27 for women. People wonder why there are so many fertility specialist and so many people have problems conceiving. Extending childhood extends the time that people have children. Ask Japan what happens when people don’t have kids and you’ve got lots of elderly people to take care of.
Because retirement, as we understand it, is a completely new concept. It was invented at the turn of the last century to provide the elderly with an easier life in their sunset years. Before that, “retirement” was largely a euphamism for “old AND infirm.” Nowadays, retirement covers roughly 1/3rd of a person’s expected lifespan. You cannot pay for 2/3rds of your life on the proceeds of 1/3rd of it, unless you are spectacularly lucky.
Luck is not a strategy. In addition to working “smarter” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), we also need to work longer – and probably farther, to boot.
This bizarre belief that has cropped up on a lot of men’s forums that girls married at age 14 and began immediately pounding out children 100+ years ago is based on blatant falsehoods.
Available US Census data from the late 19th Century adamantly does NOT show this. Neither do church records and family Bibles that researchers have consulted in the US and in Britain. All show that the average age of marriage in the 18th and 19th Centuries for men and women was 18–22 or older.
The average age of menarche (first period in girls, onset of puberty) was 16.5 in the mid–19th Century, as opposed to 10–12 now. This means that some 17–year-olds still had not had their first period back then and were still physiologically very much girls, not young women. In addition, 18 was the traditional age then for the wealthy to hold debutante parties for their daughters to signify that they were marriageable—not 14. This means that 14–year-old girls, even if married, could typically not have children yet.
A few exceptional cases are known from then, but they were just that, exceptions, typically among people in very isolated frontier communities or practicing religious beliefs out of the norm.
Many states have restricted marriage ages to much older. My home state of Virginia set the age with parental consent at 18 and without at 21 until the late 1960s, when they became 16 and 18.
What has misled many people are the cases of Loretta Lynn and Jerry Lee Lewis in the mid–20th Century. She married at 14 (actually, I believe just before her 14th birthday) and he married his 14–year-old cousin. Lewis was hounded out of Britain during his concert tour in the late 1950s during the height of his popularity when the facts about his wife’s age at marriage became known and he faced protests there. That should tell you this wasn’t usual. But what happened in hillbillyland 50–60 years ago does not indicate what was the norm a century before that.
I don’t understand this continued false belief, though some of the people on certain forums who parrot this seem to have pedophilia fantasies. Let’s deal with facts here and not myth. Boys and girls were emphatically NOT routinely marrying at 13–14 150 years ago.
There are two distinct classes of people in this democratic republic: those that earn and get reports versus those that take with not reporting (ie. Mr. Max). When a wage slave gets his W-2 or a contractor gets their 1099-MISC it is because, as a society, we have decided it it good to gather information about the income earners. Our choice. Government takes a chunk of that reported income, passes a glowing IRS badge over it and declares it ‘income, redistributed’ and then hands it out to citizens, non-citizens, and fraudsters without ANY reporting to the centralized income reporting concern. I’ll take bets (small ones) that a 1099-GOV for recipients of welfare, food stamps, section 8 housing, gubment AC in summer and heat in winter, and pretty soon we’d see some changes.
The US laws around marriage, divorce, and child custody are so preposterously unfair to men, that the men who still want to marry, that too without a pre-nup (which itself gives only partial protection), are ones who don’t know what the laws are.
US divorce laws are the most unjust laws in the US in the last 140 years.
Misandry is the new Jim Crow.
And to carry on with this point, since marriage and children have become a very risky legal proposition for men, there is no incentive for them to engage in that behavior and risk having everything they have worked for in their lives legally stolen from them.
In other words, the incentives for family life in this country for young men have been destroyed by the legal nightmare that is family court.
And yet all we get is Bill Bennett telling us to “man up” and do it anyway!
People respond to incentives. Destroy them and they will find something else to do.
Or are too devoted to God to consider it. When the choice is between Holy Matrimony and lifelong celibacy, marriage becomes much more attractive despite the laws. Solution: establish covenant marriage laws. A couple would have the choice between an ordinary marriage and a covenant marriage, but the difference is that a covenant marriage is indissoluble except by death. A covenant marriage could be annulled if fraud or duress was proven, but nothing occurring after the marriage (except one of them dying) can change the fact that they are married.
Rule #2 – Stay on topic?
The lesson from this, as always, is simple: incentives matter. If you are effectively punishing responsible adults by confiscating their wealth and using it to fund the lifestyles of the shiftless, the lazy, the immature, and the self-indulgent, don’t be surprised when people cease seeing responsible adulthood as something to aspire to.
‘Kids these days. They dress in rags, they don’t respect their elders, and their music is just noise.’
Pliny the Elder
Again I understand the argument being made but I do not understand why everyone is using Tucker Max as the archetypical example. Dr. Helen, you read the Forbes interview. Tucker Max had a horrible childhood and sounds like he was emotionally rejected by his parents. He sounds like he has a personality disorder. I feel sorry for him and am glad he is getting therapy. He has his own demons but he is NOT the one you want to make as the example of our dysfunctional culture. He is an example of what happens with abnormal child development, and when your parents are neglectful alcoholics. Lets pick on someone else as an example.
I couldnt even get through the book.
Maybe Dr. Helen can explain why women are the biggest fans of this repulsive mysogynist.
yo. tucker max pays taxes. he uses condoms. his casual sexual encounter-person has an abortion. he admits he’s morally f***ed up. It’s in his book ” Yes, I’m going to hell”-when his casual sex hookup shows up needing comfort for her abortion prior to surgery for ovarian cancer. He’s not entirely un-self-aware.
He’s not scoring benefits like my former next-door neighbor who got the gov’t to buy her kid’s diapers in perpetuity, footed the bill for a full-time nanny, and…best of all…her job entails explaining to mexican new mothers how to apply for federal housing and food stamp benefits, on the american taxpayer dime. she’s not getting anywhere near booze. she’s more destructive than he’s ever been, without having half as much fun. Or the current next door neighbor with five different babies by five different daddies. one spent last week catching up with his kid. He’s got seven babies by seven different mamas. I think he’s a lot more destructive than Tucker Max. And he drinks non- alcoholic beer.
a near alcoholic hound-dog is not like most people. TM is reaching into Don Juan opera territory. DJ the opera has near standing-room only performances. TM is DJ for those who don’t like opera.
And, while I’m thinking about it- the bar he got thrown out of? the strip club? every year in the student newspaper, there’s a profile of some of the students who work their way through college as strippers. The bar has a scholarship fund. The manager gives interviews where he talks about the students who worked their way through undergrad, and then grad school, from that bar.
So, Tucker Max, who worked his way through school, with I think some scholarship assistance, goes to a bar where some of the women are working there way through school, and maybe have some scholarship assistance. He acts like a jerk and gets thrown out. He’s then arrested by Austin Police Department policemen, who are expected to have, at minimum, community college degrees, and APD training, and make a solid five figure income, themselves.
Everyone I just mentioned is working. Every one of them is paying taxes- yes, including the dancers. That bar clears about half a million dollars a week. It’s very meticulous about it’s money. It has to keep current with its bills, or its license gets pulled. Immediately. No taxpayer bailout. No relief. It is also the largest donor to the police children’s charity, by some crazy huge margin.
Mr Tucker might have behaved atrociously in other cities, to no consequence, but in Austin, he suffered consequences. His arrest mug-shot is an Austin mugshot. That’s part of why he lives here- he can’t get away with his appalling behavior here. It’s in the interview.
and- I know the person who checks the bar license, I know the people who deal with the charity, and the interviews with the bar manager are searchable on the internet. and, yes, I do know two grad students who worked there to pay for school. One’s a librarian. One was a coder for a tech startup, and getting her PhD in psychology. Formidable women, both.
Whatever this story is, it is not a story about lay-abouts, slackers, welfare queens, ows protestors or student-loan defaulters.
Why should any man grow up in this country? Get married, etc.?
All that does is give a woman option rights to your future income, your savings and retirement accounts and your children.
Tucker Max is the way.
I’ll through Max’s autobiography of becoming an adult on the pile of similar books I have from the past 2,000 years; all of which say the same thing: don’t live the life of pig. Duh. Experience is a hard teacher but fools will learn no other way.
I just had occaasion to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and am currently working my way through Generation of Swine. I have also previously read, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.
Other than a lack of gratuousness, how was H.S. Thompson’s works different than those of Tucker Max. On one level, they both seem to be wastes of space. Looking at them deeper, don’t they just reflect aspects of culture?