Is Anger the Best Medicine?

A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now
Author: Peter Wood
Publisher: Encounter Books
Year: 2007, price $25.95 hardcover
Pages: 304


In this book anthropologist Peter Wood asks: “Have you slugged anyone today?” Seriously, a few years ago “Have you hugged anyone today?” could be heard across the land. What has changed America into an “angri-culture”? Allow me to paraphrase one final overused phrase: “Baby, We’ve come a long, angry way.”

Early Americans became so angry over the British tax on tea that a famous party was held and the tea dumped into Boston harbor. Taxes remain a sore point with many Americans, especially when we read that we paid for an $800 government toilet seat.

Delegates to the World Trade Organization are angry with each other over farm goods. As the debate rages on, more and more diplomats, politicians, lawyers, and, yes, Hollywood celebrities join in. It’s fun to be angry and profitable, too.

In the preface Wood writes: “The performance-art aspect of anger; its merit badge ‘I’m angry, therefore I’m real; and road-rage-respect-me-right-based-you’re a liar fury” characterize what he calls “New Anger.” America has become “a culture that celebrates anger.”

“The symbolic representation of anger has … become ubiquitous in American life…,” Wood writes. If you doubt him stop in your local Post Office and look at the faces on the customers queued for service. Outside a post office Wood sees a bumper sticker that reads “I see dumb people.”

We can see anger on display at anti-war rallies. We see it at anti-Bush rallies. We also see it at anti-same-sex marriage rallies. Check your local newspaper for an anger event near you.

In the 2004 Democratic Presidential Primary in Iowa, frontrunner Howard Dean lost the race and his temper. Thanks to the 24/7 cable news cycle, the world witnessed Dean in an angry rant. It disturbed voters and finished his candidacy.

Republicans took notice of the public’s reaction to Dean. In early 2006, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman told ABC News that “[New York] Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to have a lot of anger.” He concluded, “Voters do not send angry candidates to the White House.” “Anger” as political strategy backfired on the Republicans in the 2006 election.

Sports are not immune from displays of anger. Indiana Pacer guard Ron Artest attacked a fan he thought had thrown a cup of beer at him. Wood suggests that some fans go to sports events in hopes of seeing a fight, planned or actual. Basketball has taken on the moniker “gangstaball.” Interestingly, Wood failed to cite any cases of violence at high school sport events.

In an earlier era, Wood writes, “a person giving free vent to anger was seen as weak and rather pathetic.” Not any longer. “We feel entitled to express that emotion [anger], and perhaps more importantly, we feel justified in feeling it in the first place in contexts where earlier generations would have felt ashamed.”

Obviously Ann Coulter, author of “Treason,” felt no shame when she charged some of the 9/11 widows profited from their family tragedies. Most recently, Coulter called Democrat John Edwards a “faggot.” She discovered long ago that anger was profitable. To date, her books have been bestsellers.

There are more ways for people to express their anger today. We have blogs, cable news channels and endless talk radio. Rush Limbaugh vents his anger to millions of conservative listeners, while Al Franken, author of “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot,” plays to a liberal audience.

“Americans today tend to see excess anger as more of a mental-health problem than a moral issue,” Wood writes. Thus, we have a multitude of materials and classes on anger management.

Wood takes a brief foray into ethnicity to explain cultural acceptance of anger. For example, Native Americans have a right to distrust government for taking their land. African Americans have a right to speak out against racism.

Political anger receives a chapter of its own. It is the longest chapter at fifty-one pages. Wood devotes too many pages defending President Bush from critics, like Jonathan Chait who wrote “I Hate President George W. Bush” for The New Republic. The author fails to examine why many columnists and much of the public direct their anger at Bush.

The book’s most glaring omission is the episode involving Vice President Cheney and Democratic Senator Pat Leahy. On the floor of the U.S. Senate an angry Cheney told Leahy “Fuck yourself.” The Washington Post reported it exactly as our faith-based vice president said it. Was Cheney apologetic? Hell, no!

When a reporter asked the vice president if he was sorry he had used the “f-word” to a senate colleague, Cheney said “it felt good.” This exchange took place in 2004.

In 2000 our faith based President Bush called New York Times reporter Adam Clymer a “major league asshole.” And it’s also not in the book. It makes me angry that Wood failed to mention these two high level demonstrations of political anger.

Anger also has a long musical history. The Depression era hit “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime,” was an angry song that has stood the test of time. Its sad refrain immediately brings to mind bread lines, soup kitchens, unemployed faces and a sense of desperation.

Today’s songs of anger, Wood finds, are largely of the hip-hop variety. He does a good job of analyzing and translating such hits as “C.R.E.A.M” (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me”) by Wu-Tang Clan.

“Hip-hop has become the sound track to a wide variety of identity politics,” Wood writes. Hip-hop has successfully been exported to other countries. For example, Maori in New Zealand have imitated hip-hop. Other countries and cultures have done the same.

Wood thinks hip-hop will leave small musical footprints in American music, while other artists like Johnny Cash (“Folsom Prison Blues,” “Ring of Fire,” etc.) and Bob Dylan (“Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changing,” etc.) more effectively captured anger in their songs.

Angry music has filled radio airwaves for the past six decades. Wood finds that Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” “is the music of the narcissistic ennui—the music of the Columbine shootings.”

Are children being taught to be angry? Yes. Wood finds parents who teach their daughters to demonstrate “grrrl power.” He cites many books, like “The Anger Advantage: The Surprising Benefits of Anger and How It Can Change a Woman’s Life,” on the subject of women and anger. If women in your office are angry, they are likely “benefiting” at the expense of non-angry employees, Wood suggests.

Since Madelyn Murray O’Hair successfully took prayer out of schools in 1963, students and parents have become angrier about school activities, Wood writes. He says O’Hair was “a prophet of the New Anger.”

Wood calls Beat poet Allen Ginsberg “an early out-of the-closet advocate of gay love,” and Timothy Leary a “nutty Harvard professor.” After noting the sometimes short lives of many angry social activists, Wood concludes that: “Anger does not seem, on the whole, to be a good basis for a career or life.” Yet, if it weren’t for these activists and others like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., segregation, a topic Wood ignores, might still be law.

On the whole, Wood has written a timely book on a serious subject. Indeed, anger often leads to violence and tragedy. It is important to understand why this happens. However, the author’s all too lighthearted approach to the subject is enough to make a reader angry.

A darker comedic view, including input from or commentary on anger celebrities, such as Jerry Springer and Howard Stern, would have helped. While there is much left out of the book, it is still a provocative and insightful assessment on a timely subject.

A final note: When Wood overheard a workman say “A bee in the mouth is always bad” he knew he had his title. Throughout the book Wood refers to bees, hives and nests to add even more humor. It diminishes the importance of his subject.

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Jim Patterson, an economist and journalist, is a member of the National Book Critics Circle