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Bring on the garbage: strengthening the idiocy immune system

By Tony Phillips

June 19, 2006

San Diego--I try not to read the San Diego Union Tribune. I avoid the UT like some people avoid starch or second-hand smoke. It’s part of my personal effort to lead a healthy, slant-free life. I’m not perfect, but I try to control my appetite. However, I do allow myself the occasional binge. Saturday, June 17, was such an occasion.

“Gritty rats and mice living in sewers and on farms seem to have healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs, two new studies indicate. The lesson for humans: Clean living might make us sick.”

Boy do I feel vindicated. The studies mentioned in the article confirm my own intuition on the subject of clean living. For decades I have been a pack-a-day smoker. I drink tap water. I don’t rinse apples or grapes before eating them. I don’t flush public toilets with my foot. I cut chicken and vegetables on the same cutting board and the only thing I have ever swabbed with alcohol is my liver. The only time I jog is when I’m running away. Despite all this, at 40 years of age, I feel rather fit.

To me, this all makes sense. Nicotine and caffeine elevate the heart rate. Drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes in the morning accomplishes the same thing as a long, brisk walk without damaging my joints. I also don’t have to wear Dolphin shorts and look like a sweaty prick. My girlfriend doesn’t subscribe to my logic. She watches what she eats, doesn’t smoke, drinks lightly, washes her hands regularly, and gets sick all the damn time. Seriously, she’s the sickliest clean person I know. And I know a bunch of them.

All the clean living folk I know have something wrong with them, constantly. They have irritable bowel syndrome, or lactose intolerance, or whatever. One woman I know who works out like a fiend and subscribes to the South Beach diet like Pat Robertson subscribes to hellfire and brimstone was hospitalized recently with a case of encephalitis. Encephalitis! I didn’t even know that stuff was still around. I guess next she’ll contract typhus.

Think about it. Lance Armstrong got cancer. He deserved it. I’m not going to get cancer. The pollutants in my bloodstream would kick cancer’s ass. And if toxins don’t do the job, my fit, fighting and ready immune system will.

But back to my original premise: what about my avoidance of information carcinogens, like the UT. Maybe I have been going about things all wrong. Maybe the best way to protect myself from the threat of dumbing down is to expose myself regularly to the worst blather the news and entertainment industries have to offer. As it is, my idiocy-immune system is weaker than a lab rat’s defense against small pox.

So I have decided to embark upon an ambitious new course in life. I will no longer watch the The NewsHour; I’m going to watch Fox instead. I will not watch the remainder of the World Cup. I’m tuning in to the World Poker Challenge. I am throwing out every compact disc I own. From now on, I’m listening to Jessica Simpson. Jeopardy! is out. Deal or No Deal is in. And I’m damn sure not going to read The New Yorker anymore. I’m reading the San Diego Union Tribune.

It’s going to be tough, but I’m a disciplined guy.

By the end of 2006, I want to be completely immune to infotainment pollution. I want to be able to watch the E! True Hollywood Story without the threat of brain shrinkage. When somebody at my bar of choice plays the Pussycat Dolls, I want to be able to sit right through it without fear of infection. It’s a lofty goal, but I’m up to it.

I urge the rest of you to join me in leading a dirtier life. We live in an increasingly banal world and the US can’t afford to fall behind other countries in our capacity to fight banality. There are evildoers in the world who hate our taste for high art. We didn’t choose this fight, but they brought it to us. We will smoke them out of their caves and bring them to justice. But until we do, they will continue to strike at the core of American taste. The only way to defeat entertainment terrorists is to beat them at their own game.

So today, when you’re through with Vyuz log onto MySpace and start collecting friends. Then turn on a Clear Channel station and grab a copy of People. We’ve got a long way to go, but I have faith in America. Come on, pump up the volume on those idiocy antibodies. Ask not what the UT should publish for you; ask what you should read for the UT.

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Tony Phillips has resided in San Diego for 30 years and has never been tried for war crimes.