Each year the Intermountain Jewish News prints a “special issue” card. It’s about eight inches high and three inches wide, listing the special issues we publish annually. Each year, we choose a color for the card. This year, we were presented with a new color on the palette: outrageous orchid.
We were presented with just a small sample, a couple of square inches, and truth to tell it was a bit difficult to imagine the impact of this new color on a whole card. But “outrageous orchid”? Who could resist? The idea is to have a card that will stand out on potential advertisers’ desks, and it certainly sounded like this would fit the bill.
But the truth is, how could a plain color be “outrageous”? We’re not talking about an oil painting, a large billboard, or a computerized visual effect, just a plain, small card. What could be “outrageous” about it?
I believe we have here a small yet telling metaphor for our politics today, and for our literature and mode of communication more broadly. This metaphor predates Donald Trump, whose (yes) outrageous characterizations merely built on a mode of expression that has long infected all of us.
I pick up the newspaper at random and learn that under a bill proposed in Oklahoma in 2000 to allow casket sales without a funeral director’s license, “grandma’s dead body would be propped in a corner while awaiting a casket purchased on line” — and this is before I even turn on the computer, blindly typing in a random website (www.fff) and come up with this: “Murderous and Vicious.”
Once everything is over the top, nothing is over the top. Hyperbole and exaggerations fail to impress. Which only goads the phrasemakers and culture creators to try harder. Instead of “flaming” red or “delicious” orange we have “outrageous orchid.”
It’s a color, a small change from previous shades — small change, not more. And it’s only a shade of paper stock with a very limited use — one could never print a book or newspaper on it (it would be too hard to read); one could not even use it for a poster (it would be too dark for any graphic printed on it to be seen) — yet, it is “outrageous.”
And so, depending on your perspective, and even conceding that the political choices this year were poor, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton became mythic creatures for many people: absolutely the worst, or absolutely the best.
Have you noticed that in radio interviews, “yes” no longer suffices for a positive reply? Absolutely has replaced “yes,” no matter the question, from the weighty to the trivial.
Football players weigh more than 300 pounds just to be “viable.”
The economy must be discussed in “trillions” — no more trifling with “billions” — to be meaningful.
Terrorists must behead innocent people to attract the requisite attention.
Israel must be an “apartheid” state; “occupation” (itself political hyperbolic) is passé. Oh, this too: Israel must have no connection to the land of Israel, under Arab doctrine enforced on and embraced by UNESCO. Not: Arabs also have a claim to Palestine. Rather: Israel has no claim at all.
Black-and-white is the first cousin of “outrageous.” I peruse book catalogues and learn that the books are, by turns, “brilliant,” “profound,” “classic,” “the most popular of its kind, anywhere!”
We have become inured to this. We don’t believe it. We automatically, cynically, discount it. We adjust reality to deflate the extravagance and thus accustom ourselves to distortions or falsehoods.
Either that, or, far worse, we do not mentally adjust the overblown reality presented to us. We believe it. We think that if some product, promise, political candidate or spiritual claim does not deliver more than any previous version, we have been cheated and life has lost its meaning, marriage has disappointed, social clubs have gone stale, religion has fallen short.
That the existence of an almighty G-d relieves some believers of their responsibilities is an age-old occupational hazard of religion. Today, this problem defeats religion before it can even begin. It’s all a matter of context. Our language is over the top. Our perception of success is unrealistic. And so, spirituality must promise the world — and the next world — without any human effort.
This idea, taken on its face, on its denotation, is, without exaggeration, outrageous.
Religion, like football, demands ingenuity, subtlety and work.
Religion, like the economy, may well end in “trillions,” that is, in ultimate questions, but it begins with “dollars,” with small, individual deeds of goodness and of faith. Religion, unlike terrorism, honors G-d by honoring all people, just as the cynosure of religion, the holy land of Israel, sends it rays outward across the earth.
I like our new special issues card, including its color. Let us dispense with the name of the color, however. Outrage, while it certainly has its place against the likes of terrorism, embeds itself, along with its countless cousins in word and attitude, in our mental set. It fosters distortion and makes us anxious.
Anxiety, as a great Jewish religious teacher once remarked, is forbidden, with one exception: anxiety over anxiety.
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg can be reached at hillel@ijn.com.
