May 4th, 2020 - The Wish for a Good Young Country Doctor

Dear TNY,

It’s possible you have jumped the shark with “The Wish for a Good Young Country Doctor”.

Have you ever been struck by the ideals of the Midwest?  Found them confusing?  Antiquated? Not as modern as your own?  Like, do you think to yourself, “How could those people possibly support anything even remotely Trumpish?”  Have you, from your privileged ivory tower of intellectual dominance, ever considered why most of the middle of America doesn’t agree with you and/or even like you?  So much so that they will tip this country on what I believe to be a precarious precipice of national identity crisis?  (Firstly, I understand this is a generalization, but I’m going to run with it; but I know I don’t speak for everyone, obviously.  And secondly, this tipping is a reaction to what they see as a pre-tip from your side.  Also, when I say “tip” I mean they are exercising their only possible recourse against you, that being to vote for anyone other than who you champion.  They may not like the people they vote for, understandably, but they won’t stand by while your ilk takes over.  Sound familiar?)

I imagine you have not considered these people thoroughly, though.  I imagine you have not tried to step into their shoes.  At least really tried.  Platitudes have definitely been slung.  But why would you try?  These “country folk” are not your magazine’s demographic.

I say all that to say this:  This story makes you, TNY, seem like an uppity, New York, fuckass who laughs at the Midwest and their perceived country ways.  In fact, this story makes your magazine look as full-of-thyself as the MC in this story, running around the poorer areas of the country, fleecing locals, and getting off on how precious all their rural life is and was.  These cliché characters, cliché motifs, and this cliché yarn-esque storytelling style are all reflective of how you, TNY, think parts of our country are.  That you can’t think beyond fucking stereotypes.

Now, could this story be ironic and I’m not getting the humor aspect of it?  Could it be an indictment on such ridiculous clichés and stereotypes?  Maybe.  That’s fair.

But I’m going to disarm that with one fucking sentence as taken from the piece:

I’d already popped my clutch to find reverse when I flicked on my headlights, then my high beams, then braked.

So, for you cityfolk, on a vehicle equipped with a manual transmission, the clutch is a disc (and subsequent subassemblies) that separate the rotation of the engine’s crankshaft from the rotation of the transmission.  The engine spins the crankshaft all of the time while the engine is running and the transmission doesn’t necessarily spin all the time (see: stopping).  If the engine were to stop spinning because of the rolling gear (again, see:  stopping), and the clutch system was not engaged, meaning the pedal is pushed in to disconnect the two major assemblies, then the engine would die.  It’s that simple.  Pedal in, the engine and transmission are disconnected rotationally.  Pedal out, the engine is rotationally connected to the transmission, thereby pushing force to the wheels.  Shifting of gears should always be accomplished when the clutch pedal is in, because this allows the engine to do it’s job independent of the components in the transmission, which can then rotate freely of the engine’s work to line up the next dog gear (as would happen in a Jeep of this era (fully synchronized, of course)).  So in order to find a gear, one would depress the clutch pedal to disengage the engine from the transmission, proceed with the “finding” of the gear, and then release the clutch pedal to allow the engine to push power to the selected gear.  Starting, or continuing to accelerate or decelerate, the act is the same:  Clutch pedal in, shift gear, clutch pedal out.

Now with this basic primer, I’d like to offer that “popping the clutch” is a term used when the operator of the vehicle releases the clutch pedal from the pushed position to the not pushed position very rapidly.  Varying definitions of this term could include pop-starting (to start one’s car without using the starter) or revving beforehand (so as to do a burnout, like a coolboy).  Those things don’t matter, though.  Because “popping” means releasing. 

So I’m going to bring back the sentence, hoping that now we have greater understanding:

I’d already popped my clutch to find reverse when I flicked on my headlights, then my high beams, then braked.

What this sentence is saying is that the operator released the clutch pedal very rapidly and then proceeded to find the gear.  As we have just learned, though, if one were to do this, one could not find a gear because the engine would be engaged with the transmission and would not allow shifting.  And in a fully synchromeshed transmission, one likely would not even be able to try to grind it in, as if it were a 1940’s truck (straight cut, non-synchronized gears), as the synchronizers have blockers to prevent this (in most models, but not all).  I assume what the writer was trying to say was that the MC depressed the clutch in order to locate reverse but the author also wanted to look cool and use cool phrases.  Also like a coolboy. 

So, back to Midwesterners and credibility and literature and elitist douchebaggery.  The fact that the author failed to understand what anyone who had ever driven a manual transmission would know is contemptible.  But the real fucking issue here is that an entire magazine’s editorial staff failed to have the life experience necessary nor the editorial prowess or expertise to catch this fucking glaring mistake, a mistake so fucking basic that it argues in favor of this story not, in fact, being ironical (because with irony comes intelligently making one’s humor, not failing to understand what the people you are writing about would understand), but instead renders this story exactly the kind of evidence that shows that you fucking New York dickbags have no fucking clue what it is to live in the world of these people AND DON’T FUCKING CARE TO KNOW.  So while you can bask in the “worldliness” you achieve when slumming it (your tone, not mine), and take value from the pluck and charm of these simple people (again, your tone, not mine), just know that you look dumb as fuck to them because you were outwitted by simple automotive knowledge (and if we expand this globally, most automobiles are produced with a manual transmission so the rest of us lower class (your tone, again) global citizens would be able to point out that you elitist cockgobblers don’t know what the fuck you are publishing while you purport to be “inclusive”, whatever that means (arguments could be made about the experience to a laymen like yourself not being able to differentiate CVT vs Auto vs etc which do make up a larger production portion than manual when lumped together, but are not the same and should not be lumped)).

And finally, the world is shut down right now and you slip in this fucking thinly veiled attempt to get people united around staying at home?  And you can’t even get your fucking facts right?  And that’s supposed to make a difference?  You’re so fucking tone deaf it’s obnoxious.  But you’ll never make it this far into this letter to hear that.  Nope. It’ll just be another Monday.  Another circle of TNY folks, patting each other on the back, congratulating each other on another kickass edition to literature (figuratively, as I assume you are not in the same room together, ‘ronies et al; natch).

This story reminds of a scene from Serenity (forgive the quality).  It looks you are telling people how to think while simultaneously showing the group you culturally appropriated that you don’t respect or care about them, their lives, and their knowledge.  And that’s fucked.

Nice one.

Nick

P.S. Basic storytelling error here:  We don’t use parenthetical statements in dialog in writing because it’s supposed to be someone talking to another person so how the fuck would that other person know it’s a parenthetical statement?  Why not just incorporate it as it’s meant to be said to the listener in the story and is not just for us, the reader?  Oh, lack of editorial skill, knowledge, talent, or seemingly education.  And that’s coming from me, who is an absolute pile of shit when it comes to that sort of thing.