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A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now

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Bee Review

Daniel L. Henry

A National Public Radio interview with rhetoric and anthropology professor Peter Wood convinced me that I should read A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now. A rhetorician myself, I was charged by the notion of a respected colleague taking on the pervasive volcanism that currently flows through American communication behavior. My feelings toward vitriol, especially the steroidal indignation that Wood claims is in vogue--approximates that, I imagine, of most NPR listeners. It sounds to me like the claxon call of cultural implosion. Unlike most, however, I take copious notes.

When Aristotle wrote The Rhetoric in 250 B.C., he called it the "art of using all available means to persuade." Those who admit to being rhetoricians acknowledge our devotion to the argument--its causes, impacts, and implications. Scholars know to examine equally the messages arising from prominent camps, say Democrats and Republicans, or developers and environmentalists. It's a conversation. You scaffold on the messages of the other. Rhetoric happens when you give your reasons for going to a specific movie, present yourself in an interview, or explain to your teenager why she can't use the car this weekend. It takes at least two for a rhetorical tango. A bee in one mouth can provoke hives in others.

The opening chapters of A Bee in the Mouth touch on many of the causes and mouthpieces contributing to our national dysphoria--the 2000 presidential election, religion, Iraq, popular music, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson. I can buy that. After he adequately establishes his thesis that we have a serious communication breakdown, Wood declares that his "aim is neither to cure anger nor enhance its undoubted pleasures. Rather, I want to describe our new anger in contrast to our older habits of emotional restraint and then to explain how it became so widespread and so intense in American life."

As I turn the pages, however, a bilious sensation arises in my gut--the way I feel whenever it hits me that I've been duped. Peter Wood is accurate, I believe, in suggesting that starting in the 1950s, a counterculture reinvigorated a national tradition of protest speech, some of which became institutionalized as baby-boomers aged. The author wallows in shock talk and angry lyrics. He describes Al Gore's "bloated face" and Hillary Clinton's "New Anger theatrics."

It started with Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, Wood posits, then the "Howl" swept up war protesters, druggies, greenies, feminists, musicians, atheists, relativists, writers, New Age philosophers, entertainers, intellectuals, rappers, scientists, filmmakers, politicians, and communists. Oh yeah, and Joseph Campbell and Ben Cohen. All enemies of the Way It Used to Be.

Right. I am a white, Christian guy living in a rural Alaskan town. I hear that line of thinking a lot. I used to think it was just a product of basic paranoia and fear of change. Now there's a book that proves it.

Missing is a scholarly eye to the role of traditional conservatives in the rhetoric of anger.
Omitted is any textual analysis of the Fox attack dogs, Limbaugh, Coulter, O'Reilly; or the effect of the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, and the Christian Coalition used the anger borne of ebbing power to broadcast a fundraising rhetoric that proved so effective as to swing a vast voting demographic into an Evangelical army. Righteous anger fuels whatever campaign Wants Our Nation Back now. The evidence spills from the airwaves, but that evidence never makes these pages.

Draped in academic robes, A Bee in the Mouth turns out to be a tool of the very rhetoric it pretends to study. Author Peter Wood has done some thinking on the subject, and has written a book solemnly tracing the link between New Anger and New Age. But he overlooks the delicate dance of messages, that we choose ways of expressing anger based on the acts of others, and, that Right or Left, we all share the same hive.

A BEE IN THE MOUTH: ANGER IN AMERICA NOW considers issues of 'social anger', or how the anger in American society has become not only excessive but glorified. College-level collections strong in social sciences in particular will find here a unique survey of evidence of the 'new anger' dominating American culture, from politics to music. Chapters analyze how this anger has manifested itself throughout society, how it affects relationships, ideals and goals, and how it differs from 'anger' of the past. An intriguing title, perfect for classroom discussion.

Peter Wood's study of anger and self-righteousness, 'A Bee in the Mouth,' may go unnoticed by many big time book reviewers, but the topic is central to American public life today. Nothing better explains the acrimonious divisions between Democrats and Republicans when they get to Washington (at home they are more civil). Nothing explains better angry music and the cage combat of Spike TV. Finally, nothing will be a more reliable corrective to the current divisions in our society, which we will have to resolve over the next decade.
America is in a 1960s-like moment, only more so. We are spending too much and we can't make the payments any longer. Public unions are becoming a public problem. This, rather than the racial and social divisions of fifty years ago, will dominate public debate, and this book is the key to understanding the rhetoric you will hear. It will also help all of us to calm ourselves down. Wood's book concludes with a call for 'Cooling off,' long overdue.
Get it. Read it. You will be a better person for it, and America will be a happier place if more of us take Wood's message seriously.
Wight Martindale

Peter Wood is an anthropologist, which places his analysis in a slightly different place from the work of social critics or journalists or pundits or even historians. He looks at the long view, and asks "What precisely does this society believe about anger, why do they believe it, and when did they start?" However, I don't think he really nailed the answer; possibly we are too deep inside it to differentiate the zeitgeist from the gee. I do, though, find his argument that this is a new phenomenon completely compelling.

Another problem I had stems from not really understanding what he means by anger. He gives lots of examples of what he sees as symptoms or emblems of anger, but are t-shirts, tattoos, and piercings really manifestations of anger? I'd like to know what constitutes anger. If I say, in a measured and reasoned voice, "Stop that, or I will kill you" am I angry? Or if I scream hysterically "I'm sick of this traffic" am I angry? Anger, derision, condescension, bile, smarminess, are all part of the same trend towards dismissing opponents as unworthy of consideration, but they are not all anger. Nor is that dismissal anger. Now there is lots of what I think of as anger in political discourse. Name calling, shouting down, and screaming "I hate..." are part of what is happening in contemporary discourse, especially visible in academia. But these are not really new, as he points out. The difference today, carefully and extensively documented, is that this anger is now seen as a badge of authenticity, a medal to be worn with honor rather than a character flaw to be controlled. Virulent animosity has characterized our politics at least since Burr shot Hamilton. (I do wish he had addressed a now unknown firestorm that dominated American politics for decades, the venomous loathing that followed the Civil War and included once famous names like Tilden, Conkling, Hayes and Arthur. Those fellows knew how to be angry.) But today the hater is seen as being true to something, a sincere and trenchant critic, though I suspect the currency will change should a Democrat be elected in 08.

I believe it is partly the Sports Center syndrome. The loud, the crazed, the belligerent, the rude, the bad boys, the obnoxious all get on TV and their messages, truncated to fit the 10 seconds provided, broadcast. We all know about Cindy Sheehan, a hugely famous bumbling know-nothing blowhard with a mean streak she is eager to display, but the innumerable reasoned critics, whether pro or con, get nowhere. People won't listen? Don't listen? Can't? I don't know, but the short and virulent attack, frequently full of personal slander substituted for content (think of "Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot;" though again, imagine if Ann Coulter published a book entitled "Rosie O'Donnell Is a Big Fat Idiot") has become the gleefully tallied currency of "discussion," and anyone who denies it is denying reality.

So, is the book worth reading? Well, I was not as enlightened as I was after reading "Diversity," one of the more important books of our time. The left is working hard at suppressing discussion and making huge areas of the discourse off-limits, and that topic seems far more important to me. Anger ebbs and flows, and our elastic definitions and ever-changing lines of decency will make this topic far more challenging to pin down. I enjoyed it, I learned a lot, I laughed out loud many times, I now realize the differences between today's anger and that of the past. I just don't know if it is all that important.

And one last thing...whatever they paid the dust jacket designer was too much. An early, but powerful, entry in the Ugliest Book of the Year (maybe decade!) awards.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it is a lot of fun to read. The author has a good sense of humor, it is an easy read. However, aside from giving such examples, he was also attempting to make a persuasive case that we have changed our attitudes about anger in a fairly basic manner. And I don't think he succeeded in that. I'd still give it a strong recommendation - his analysis of hip-hop music alone is well worth the price of the book.

The subject of anger in America could make an interesting read, but Wood's conservative biases doom this book to mediocrity. In Wood's world, anger resides almost solely on the left. Apparently, he's never listened to AM radio, where right-wing hosts like Michael Savage ( strangely never mentioned in the book) froth at the mouth about subjects like immigration. Overall, a disappointment.