Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You by Greg Gutfeld

seasons, it tackled every moral issue effectively and only once mentioned the word “sex.” (It was the show when Bobby Sherman nailed Alice in the pantry.) It aired every Friday night, and I never missed an episode. Those were the happiest days of my life. Until I discovered NyQuil.
    The lessons of the
Bunch
somehow stick with you forever. One episode still haunts me: season four, episode seventeen, called “Bobby’s Hero.” It aired February 2, 1973—an important time in our popular history, and mine too. I was nine years old, and approximately the same height I am now.
    In this episode, Bobby, the youngest of the three Brady boys, becomes enamored of the lore of outlaw Jesse James, so much so that the ruthless killer becomes his hero, with Bobby playacting throughout, mock robbing and shooting his annoying siblings. It was an acting tour de force, as far as tours de force by freckle-facedfreaks go (Danny Bonaduce never even got close). Why Mike Lookinland did not win an Emmy is a stain forever left on the fabric of Hollywood—a place where stains on fabric abound. I blame Cindy, evil spawn-of-Satan that she was.
    Bobby’s parents (the adorable Mike and Carol Brady) become concerned over this development and try to figure out a way to turn Bobby’s infatuation off. In effect, they try to sober him to the reality of history. They want, in the words of one of the relatives of James’s victims, to show that Jesse James was little more than a “mean, dirty killer,” who shot his granddad in the back. They want to strip away the cool veneer and reveal the grotesque reality of a common, murderous thug. One far worse than David Cassidy.
    But there was a problem: All the stuff in books and television portrayed James not as a killer at all but as a romantic outlaw. For a kid, Jesse James was cool because our culture made it so. Never mind the murders he committed; he lived outside our boring society, above the law, and did what he wanted. This was the definition of cool, not just for Bobby but for anyone enamored by the revolutionary groups erupting in the late 1960s to early ’70s—from the Weather Underground, to the Black Panthers, to the horrible cast members of
Zoom
(precursor to the Branch Davidians). As long as cool is defined as anything but doing “what you’re told to do by the man,” then anything is accepted as laudable behavior. Killing becomes not a crime but an act of political heroism—a strike against a suffocating, corrupt world bent on killing your soul.
    So being the great dad he is, Mike Brady does his research, finds a relative of one of James’s victims, and brings him to their multilevel house, to give Bobby the unvarnished truth. (Okay, the show wasn’t noted for its realism.) The relative, an old guy played by a great character actor named Burt Mustin, grimly retellshow Jesse James shot his daddy in the back. He’s sexy, in a male Angela Lansbury sorta way.
    The story doesn’t seem to shake Bobby. He still prefers to embrace the lies rather than accept the ugly truth of his obsession. It’s not until Bobby has a nightmare, in which the killer murders the Bradys during a train robbery, that he changes his mind. (In the scene, actors use fingers as guns. I read somewhere that the directors believed guns would be too unsettling. Can you imagine?) This is the kind of remedy that comes from meeting a victim. It brings the horror home. I remember Bobby’s dream as if it were my own. I remember being shaken by the episode, so much so that I didn’t play cowboys and Indians for a month. I might be exaggerating. Either way, I took up hopscotch. Then, later, Scotch.
    To this day, I always wonder why this isn’t the law of the land. Celebrities and activists who adore violent radicals should be forced to meet the relatives of the people killed by those adorable violent radicals. Have Robert Redford meet the relatives of the victims of the Weather Underground. Let’s see how brave the Sundance