I Hate to Say It But
...I am feeling sorry for J.D. Vance
You probably already saw it but just in case you didn’t, here is J.D. Vance embarrassing himself by trying to talk to donut shop employees in front of everybody.
Just to be clear, I do not like J.D. Vance. I have no idea what he is like deep down inside, but when someone is running for public office that doesn’t matter. Based on his public persona and his stated opinions/policies he seems a nasty piece of work. I love Tim Walz and his family! I love Gus! I’m for Kamala all the way!
But this donut shop thing has really come to bother me. The media went nuts making fun of Vance for being awkward and inept at small talk, analyzing and criticizing it over and over, just loving the chance to flaunt their normalcy and niceness in comparison—loving too the natural comparison between him and “normal, happy” guy Tim Walz.
OMG, how can he be so weird???
Well, I just want to say something in defense of weird people who are clumsy at small talk. Because we are people too.
The day before I became aware of the donut video I was shopping at a small local grocery where I had a tiny moment of mystifying awkwardness. I was waiting at the register and there was one woman ahead of me, an old lady who was rhapsodically chatting with an equally rhapsodic young cashier. The cashier was telling the lady (who had a Scots accent) about her recent trip to Edinburgh and how great it was. They talked about how great it was for what seemed like several minutes. The check out was complete and the groceries were bagged but they were enjoying themselves so much that they continued talking about Scotland and then London; the cashier had plans to attend a university there! It was kind of amazing. If I’d been in a hurry I would’ve been annoyed but I wasn’t. I was just marveling that these two people who hadn’t met before could do this. And I know they hadn’t met before because their last words were “You’re going to have an incredible time!” and “It was so great to meet you!”
Then I approached the register. Wanting to keep the feeling going, I said “What a nice lady that was!” The cashier agreed but suspiciously. I told her I had been to Edinburgh too and I also thought it was great. She replied monosyllabically. I asked her what school she was going to; she told me. I think I said “Cool”? Our last words were “Have a great rest of your day.” and “You too.”
So I tried. Maybe it was something about my voice or body language? Maybe the cashier had just maxed out on rhapsody with strangers and didn’t want to do it again? I really don’t know! But I do know that I’m grateful not to have to ever go into a donut shop and say relatable charming things plus smile a lot plus buy a bunch of donuts while being videoed for the entire planet. Because if I had to do that for some unimaginable professional reason—go into a public place and make the world like me—I would embarrass myself too. My smile would be stiff and maniacal too—actually I probably wouldn’t even be able to smile, my eyes would be doing stiff and maniacal all by themselves. In terms of actual words I would probably do a little better than Vance: Donuts! Just talk about the donuts! “What do you recommend? What’s your favorite? I like the classics, I like maple walnut and coconut! Do you have those? What’s the one with that purple icing, that looks nice!” So far, so good, even with desperate staring eyes. But if I felt like more was required—and in a professional context more would be required, a lot more—it could rapidly devolve into something weird. The harmless-looking line “Are there donuts you used to love that now make you sick?” could turn into: “Are you sick of all of them?” which could lead to “Well, that’s probably better, they are the worst kind of junk food. But still its sad, there are so many things in life like that!” Which could become a soliloquy about the things in life that you used to love and that now make you feel sick. Or bitter. Or sad. Or…you get the idea.
Fortunately I will never have to do this daunting thing. I’m glad that Tim Walz can do it! I’m glad he’s happy! (I mean if he actually is. His eyes often look sad to me. His face looks deeper than simply happy. That’s what makes me trust him.) But this glorification of happy and normal is making me nervous. Because it reminds me of my 60s childhood, when happy and especially normal was a rigid behavioral grid, and your social worth was assessed in direct proportion to how well you conformed to that grid, something I found to be frustratingly undoable. There was often real meanness hidden in the norm of a very particular niceness, and I was greatly relieved when at some point it became okay to be…something else, actually all kinds of other things.
I know of course that my youthful 60s experience is not what Harris and Walz stand for. I saw Tim Walz’s convention speech in which he extolled neighborly acceptance of people who might think different, pray different, love different. (Similar sentiments were officially extolled in the small town where I spent some formative years; what people said and how they acted in this regard were not the same, but never mind.) I know that right now there’s a serious real-world fight going on and I want our side to win. I want Trump/Vance to be defeated; I hope that one will go to jail and the other just…kept from acting out on the world any more than he already has. But then I want the insistence on happy and normal to stop; I want the world to be safe for weird, awkward people again. Because most of us are also nice and even, basically, normal.
My problem with that video is that Vance set it up. He did that without thinking of what to say, without scouting in advance to make sure salespeople were willing to be videoed, and that shows arrogance. When I give a poetry reading, I practice because I am shy and awkward and while I used to think of this as my great affliction, now I realize it's not respectful to the audience to not try very hard to do better. Vance didn't try.
It's possible for many things to be true at once, I think.
The lazy journalism that focuses on personalities in political contests has created circumstances has made it imperative for candidates to portray themselves as ordinary people, as if social ease had something to do with political intelligence and efficacy. One particularly enraging example: Remember when the press said that more people would like to have a beer with George Bush instead of Al Gore in 2000? Never mind that Bush is an alcoholic and knows it and that he subsequently ginned up a war that caused hundreds of thousand of deaths. I suppose I could feel sorry for JD Vance for being embroiled in that system, and walking into a trap of his own making. I'd rather go with schadenfreude.
As Margaret K. Diehl noted earlier, he jumped in of his own accord. I think that reflects the mediocre while male illusion that we're witty and charming and people genuinely like us, rather than the fact that it's a lot easier to smile and go about your business and not piss us off. He thinks all he has to do is show up, and he can "win." Nope.
Don't get me wrong: I do think Vance is authentic. He's an authentic bootlicking misogynist and racist. It's kind of the fundamental identity of MAGA. It's not like they're hiding it. What makes the schadenfreude sweetest of all is when someone won't play into it. I think that's what people are hoping for in the debates.
I haven't looked closely at Walz as a personality. What I can look at is the difference between the way things work here in Iowa, with our MAGA governor and nitwit legislature, and what's happened in Minnesota under his watch. He could come off as a blithering idiot and the record would still count for more.
The difference between Vance's social failure and yours (and by extension the rest of ours) is that you weren't trying to charm someone whose life you were, at the same time, trying to make worse. If I were a woman of color working in retail, I'd spit in his cruller, if I thought I'd get away with it. Failing that, I'd hope I could refuse to engage.