City Lights: Save your outrage for the truly reprehensible

I had a vague sense that there had been something enervating about 2014, and then Slate put it beautifully in words. Actually, words were only part of it: The online magazine assembled a remarkable graphic that featured a series of tiles, each one indicating what people were outraged by the most on each of the 365 days. The headline, needless to say, proclaimed it “The Year of Outrage.”

In the grand scheme of things, that title is about as meaningful as proclaiming 1992 “The Year of the Woman.” Outrage, like women, has been with us since civilization began, and civilization probably arose to tamp down some outrageous behavior by our Neanderthal forebears. Slate even ventured to define what outrage meant, and one possibility was “the subjective experience of being furious at something that crosses a perceived line.” Yes, we see that in ancient history, and also in the sandbox at your local nursery school.

Still, that 365-part graphic drove home just how scandalized we’ve been over the last 12 months. A partial roll call: Bill Cosby. Donald Sterling. Ferguson. Jennifer Lawrence’s leaked photos. “The Interview.” The proposal to ban the word “feminist.” Rolling Stone’s campus-rape story. Rolling Stone’s apology for the campus-rape story. Lena Dunham’s memoir. Something Obama said, or didn’t say, or said the wrong way or at the wrong time — it’s all starting to blur.

Below its description of each day’s outrage, Slate invited readers to vote on whether the news truly deserved the uproar it received, with a barometer showing the results. The Jan. 3 scandal, “Comedian Natasha Leggero jokes on live TV that Pearl Harbor vets are so old they can only eat SpaghettiOs,” drew just 11.6% as of late December; Eric Garner’s death, listed for July 17, neared consensus with 96.9%.

I had forgotten all about SpaghettiO-gate, but others on the list also slipped my mind and still received high marks from readers. The true test is how much we’ll remember them a year after our initial bluster. While I was dismayed by the comments Sterling made in a private conversation, they reverberate for me far less than Garner’s cry of “I can’t breathe.” And however appropriate it is for a scientist to wear a shirt bearing drawings of scantily clad women, Malala Yousafzai’s campaign for girls’ education carries plenty more weight.

Revisiting the tiles on that Slate graphic, I thought of a comment from Terrence Roberts, one of the black “Little Rock Nine” students who integrated an Arkansas high school in 1957. Roberts, whose book was the subject of Huntington Beach’s annual HB Reads program this year, wrote that America has gone through many changes in recent decades, but they’re largely “cosmetic” ones — focused on keeping surface appearances tidy while larger problems persist underneath.

There’s a cosmetic quality to much of our outrage as well. It’s easier to bristle at the revelation that Paula Deen once used an inappropriate word than to untangle the factors that have perpetuated racial inequality for centuries. Especially with social media, outrage often takes the form of moral victories or symbolic catharsis: We respond to quick, spontaneous actions with quick, spontaneous reactions, and then it’s on to the next offense.

Myself? I don’t feel outraged very often, at least not per the definition of Slate, which argued that the word implies “external manifestations of anger, fist-clenching gestures rather than inner fire.” Perhaps I’ve mellowed with age, or perhaps 365 days is a long time to sustain a clenched fist. Or maybe it comes down to an old adage: The more you know, the more you forgive. To put a modern twist on that, we could say that the more you know, the more you look past Twitter.

I’m not outraged by Sterling’s comments so much as saddened that he feels the way he does — or, at least, the way he did when his voice was being recorded. I’m also hopeful that he’ll learn from this experience and come out of it a better man. We are all capable of ignorance, and few among us don’t regret something we have said at some point.

I’m not outraged by those who sneer at feminists so much as perplexed by their lack of education. If people think women’s equality is a risible matter, they should read up on the history of the last century, or the last millennium or two. To stay current, they should brush up on Malala as well.

I’m not outraged by Esquire’s proclamation that 42 is the most desirable age for women. Why bother? It’s the kind of catchy fluff piece that sells a few magazines, stirs a little debate and doesn’t result in any men slighting their 43-year-old wives. And I frankly couldn’t care less about Ann Coulter’s ridiculing of a doctor who flew to Liberia to fight Ebola. This is Coulter, ladies and gentlemen. She thrives on outrage, and we can give our thumbs a rest by not whipping out the iPhones to text indignantly about her latest bile.

On the other hand, I am outraged by a number of events whose notoriety will not decline with every refresh of a Facebook home page. I’m outraged that Garner died the way he did on a Staten Island sidewalk. I’m outraged by what happens in North Korea, movie studio hacks notwithstanding. I’m outraged by the living conditions of many of the Mexican farmers who pick our produce, as the Los Angeles Times profiled recently in a harrowing investigative series.

And, as tedious as the Year of Outrage may have been, I’m thankful that we’re still sensitive enough to call injustice when we perceive it. Half a century ago, Bob Dylan sang, “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?” As the last year demonstrated, we see, and see, and then see some more. But it’s ultimately time, rather than Twitter, that proves if we’re nearsighted or not.

MICHAEL MILLER is the features editor for Times Community News in Orange County. He can be reached at [email protected] or (714) 966-4617.