The Joy of Pain (6 page)

It is easy to find biographical examples conveying a similar pervasive role for social comparison in people's everyday emotions, with
schadenfreude
inevitably punctuating the emotional landscape as a result. Born and raised in working-class Portsmouth, Virginia, journalist Nathan McCall illuminated the troubled terrain of racial comparison in his memoir,
Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America
.
⁴²
Although McCall grew up in a largely stable family and did well in school, by the time he was 15 he was carrying a gun and engaging in a range of criminal behavior from gang rape to armed robbery. He narrowly avoided a murder charge when a man he shot managed to pull through and survive, but, by his late teens, he was arrested for robbing a McDonald's. McCall finds himself in prison, which, despite its challenges, helps him turn himself around. By the time he left prison, he had completed a degree in
journalism. After several disappointments, he landed a job as a reporter for
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution
, and, eventually,
The Washington Post
.

The memoir takes the reader through a territory unfamiliar to most people. Few of us know what it is like to commit armed robbery or to engage in gang rape, and the people who commit such acts are rarely in the position to write about them with McCall's effectiveness. His honesty is blistering, but for the reader interested in human psychology, the dividends are rich.

McCall is hyper-aware of social comparisons, especially those that involve race. Much of his downward spiral toward cruel behavior and crime can be traced to feelings of inferiority linked to his black identity. As a child of about seven or eight, he would watch TV and be “enchanted” by white people. He would think how much more fun white people seemed to have. In various ways, he got the message that white people were superior to blacks, such as when his mother would tell him to “Stop showing your color. Stop acting like a
nigger
!”
⁴³
Or his grandmother would compare his bad behavior with the good behavior of the kids from an affluent Jewish family for whom she did domestic work. These white boys were “
nice
” and did everything she told them to do—why didn't he act like them also?
⁴⁴
Once, he tried to straighten his hair with some of his grandfather's pomade, but it didn't last. Within minutes, his hair went from “straight, to curly, and back to nappy.”
⁴⁵
He received a whack on the back of his head from his mother when she discovered what he had done and endured the scalding effects of washing out the pomade. Worst of all, he suffered the pride-wounding recognition that his hair would never be as straight as the privileged and superior white people around him.

Painful longings and confused frustrations ruled his life. Envy and resentment plagued him. McCall summed up this time in his life this way:

I'm certain that that period marked my realization of something it seemed white folks had been trying to get across to me for most of my young life—that there were two distinct worlds in America, and a different set of rules for each: The white one was full of possibilities of life. The dark one was just that—dark and limited.
⁴⁶

The accumulating toll of these experiences had corrosive effects on his psyche, and McCall suffered bitterly from consuming, explosive anger. He could
hardly see straight well enough to make good decisions, which partly explained why he turned to various unhealthy and ultimately criminal behaviors.

One way he coped was by finding ways to see himself, and black folks in general, as superior to whites. During his time in prison, he learned how to play chess, conscious that white inmates considered themselves better at chess because it involved thinking. Thus, McCall approached any game against a white inmate as a war rather than a game. He focused every fiber of his being and every ounce of his concentration on winning. And he usually did win.

The win and the trophy (I still have it) were especially sweet because I beat an egotistical white inmate in the finals. I fasted for two days in preparation for that match and beat that white boy like he stole something.
⁴⁷

Later, as a reporter, he would constantly examine the behavior of his white colleagues and note when it seemed better or worse than the behavior of black folks. He was depressed by their superiority and was elevated by their inferiority. He attended a party at which “constipated-looking white folks” discuss politics and tell “corny jokes.
⁴⁸
While working at
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
, he concluded that many of the white reporters were terrible at choosing clothing, having selected uncoordinated colors and patterns. He notes that they “couldn't dress as sharp as the brothers and they felt insecure about it.”
⁴⁹
He enjoyed their ineptitude.

McCall also found satisfaction when the owners of the
Journal-Constitution
hired Bill Kovach, a former Washington bureau chief of
The New York Times
, to run the paper and upgrade its quality. Kovach brought in his own team and shook the place up. Many reporters were comfortable with the old ways and resented a “Yankee” coming in and changing things. It was as though they still hadn't accepted the outcome of the Civil War. McCall could understand why his colleagues reacted this way and, to a degree, felt a kinship with them. He sensed that many Southerners suffered an inferiority complex that ran deep. Whites from the North had “worked a
mojo
number on their minds”
⁵⁰
that continued across many generations. Maybe there was a parallel in the ways black people had coped with the degrading legacy of slavery. Kovach's actions, by suggesting that these white reporters couldn't run a newspaper in a competent way, aggravated past wounds. McCall imagined that the stereotype of the
“hick” Southerner was humiliating in ways not so very different from stereotypes of intellectual inferiority that black people had suffered. But this understanding did not take the edge off McCall's
schadenfreude
.

Watching some of those good ol' boys huddling conspiratorially in their clusters, grumbling all the time about “them damned Yankees coming in and taking over,” you would have thought they were planning to fight the fucking Civil War all over again. Some got mad and quit. Kovach fired others. It was interesting seeing white people warring against each other like that. I enjoyed watching the carnage.
⁵¹

McCall's sentiments are raw, but they are not mysterious. They come as no surprise in the light of the laboratory evidence that van Dijk and his colleagues provide. The pleasure that McCall experienced when he perceived inferiority in whites was fine-tuned by the insults to his racial dignity suffered as a child and the continued challenge of confronting racial stereotypes of black inferiority.

McCall enjoyed the highs of superiority. But notice that a big part of his enjoyment came from focusing on another person's inferiority as much as on his own superiority. Perceptions of superiority and inferiority are interlinked, but our attention can be directed at either pole. As we'll learn in
Chapter 2
, this second direction of focus, downward comparisons, provides many opportunities for
schadenfreude
. Indeed, they explain why many events hit an ingrained funny bone.

“Ain't no reason to cry, George,” Dub said. “We're a lot better off than the grasshoppers.”

—
W. T. “D
UB
” S
CROGGINS
¹

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

—
M
ARK
T
WAIN
²

It's not enough that I fly first class … my friends must also fly coach.

—
N
EW
Y
ORKER
C
ARTOON
³

Writer Susan Cheever describes dinner parties at which people would embarrass themselves with each extra drink. Women would apply their lipstick left of center, and men would crash to the floor among broken dishes. It was, “One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor,” as George Carlin might have added.
⁴
Unfortunately for Cheever, this is all in the past. Parties where slurred speech, pratfalls, and shattered crockery can be enjoyed have almost vanished from the social scene in recent years. According to Cheever, people still drink, but they don't get drunk, which means that they behave better and no longer make spectacles of themselves. Social disapproval of overdrinking has even overcome alcohol addiction. Cheever laments the change, because “there is a kind of drunkenfreude to watching others embarrass themselves.”
⁵

Cheever is an alcoholic, which is why she also avoids drinking at these parties. She knows the ruinous effects of alcoholism. She has authored a book about Bill Wilson, who founded Alcoholics Anonymous, and has written both about the alcoholism suffered by her well-known father, John Cheever, and her own struggles with this addiction. This intimacy with alcoholism moves her to empathize with people who embarrass themselves while drunk, but she also delights in it.
⁶

She plays the role of hopeful observer. She longs for replays of the drunken behavior, but refuses the director's chair. Like most people, she is ambivalent enough about taking pleasure in misfortunes in which she plays no role; engineering a misfortune is even more taboo. She takes her downward comparison pick-me-ups as they come, anticipating them, hoping for them, taking the classic passive route to
schadenfreude
rather than an active one. Yet she reveals a certain mischievousness in her heritage when she recalls something her father would do. When he was sober, he would “mix killer martinis” in order to enjoy their effects on his guests.
⁷

There are many paths to pleasing downward comparisons. Strategies range from joining groups whose members provide a comparison boost, focusing attention on people who are down and out, exaggerating the inferior qualities in other people who are otherwise superior, dismissing the value of other
people's superior qualities to taking actions to bring about others' inferiority—such as making killer martinis. There are unlimited permutations.

One handy maneuver is simply to look at almost any form of media because so many news outlets home in on scandals and other misfortunes happening to others. So does the ever-expanding genre of reality television that I explore in
Chapter 7
. Humiliation, or the public bringing “down” of others, is the frequent lure for viewers. And today, with the internet and its various means of providing information, embarrassing behavior becomes instantly available for broad and repeated viewings. What produces hits is often what also provides a gratifying downward comparison.
⁸
Many readers will recognize this quote:

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some … people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.
⁹

This was the response by Caitlin Upton, a contestant from South Carolina in the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant, to the question: “Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?” It is not easy to answer any question under a competitive, public glare, and most of us can remember suffering a brain spasm when put on the spot. Later, when interviewed on NBC's
Today Show
, she explained herself much better.
¹⁰
She was a good sport about it, even doing self-parodies.
¹¹
But her word salad of an answer was so marvelously convoluted, so replete with unforgettable phrases (“like such as” and “the Iraq”) that media outlets replayed it mercilessly, with mocking commentary. This merited multiple viewings and a YouTube link worth forwarding it to others for their sure enjoyment. In fact, it was an instant YouTube sensation, ultimately the second most viewed video of 2007.
¹²
It won the “stupidest statement of the year award”
¹³
and was on top
or near the top of many lists of memorable quotes of the year.
¹⁴
It was second in the “Yale Book of Quotations,” just behind “Don't tase me, bro,” the plea that a college student used to avoid being tossed out of a college auditorium where Senator John Kerry was giving a speech.
¹⁵
It continues to be a favorite downward comparison stimulant, a dependable
schadenfreude
kick.
¹⁶