Commentary
'The New Yorker' Mocks Emotional Support Animals, Protest To Follow
- by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, December 1, 2015
New Yorkers like to view themselves as a flinty, self-reliant, no-nonsense bunch -- a city whose unofficial mascot is a brassy lady waving her hand dismissively in the deli with the damning words: “This whitefish doesn’t look fresh."
So naturally, this unforgiving crew has heaped much derision on the “emotional support animal” trend, in which emotionally fragile people get to bring their pets anywhere and everywhere because they are actually service animals, like seeing eye dogs for blind people, except the person isn’t blind.
All I can say is: boy, New Yorkers are in for a wake-up call, once the wave of uber-political correctness currently sweeping America’s college campuses gets to Manhattan’s many-towered shores.
Because making fun of people with mental illness, or any complaint possibly resembling or classifiable as mental illness, according to them, is strictly verboten, as it only adds to their stigmatized status, de-validates their subjective experience, and impinges on their safe space or whatever.
Which is why I can pretty much guarantee that the reactions to the debut video in The New Yorker’s new humor series, “Shorts & Murmurs,” will range from “tssk tssk”-ing disapproval to righteous indignation.
In the first video, titled “Pets Allowed,” inspired by a similarly silly article by Patricia Marx published last year, The New Yorker’s Marc Philippe Eskenazi tools around town with a series of increasingly absurd emotional-support animals, beginning with a pig and touching on a turkey, before proceeding to a llama.
The reactions of most everyday New Yorkers he comes across are actually pretty subdued, probably because of the presence of a video camera in addition to Eskenazi’s letter from a therapist (obtained online) which he waves around at the slightest sign of doubt. Indeed, the bellboy at the Plaza is mostly interested in taking a picture of his pig, while the neighborhood barber sympathizes with the feelings of urban alienation that drove him to take up with a turkey.
But as The New Yorker will doubtless soon be reminded, we live in a profoundly dour and humorless age, and mockery (like war, according to the same people) is simply never the answer.
On that note, the video hasn’t been up long enough to attract the usual storm of indignation, but let’s look at some of the comments on the original piece by Patricia Marx, shall we?
Ah yes, as expected: “No thanks Patricia Marx for this article. You and The New Yorker just contributed to the negative stigma of mental illness. This mocks anyone actually benefiting from an ESA. This article encourages people who are on the fence to seek help with a disorder to not seek help. The next time there is an act of violence committed from someone with a mental illness ... Think about this article of mocking and bullying that you have written and published...and consider that you might have contributed to it. Perhaps you should write an article that shows the benefits of an ESA.”
And hey, I never even thought of this: "Did the author of this piece give any thought at all to the distress she was causing the animals as she paraded them through places they obviously didn't want to go?”
Okay, New Yorker, I’m setting my stopwatch for an apology!
Erik Sass is editor of Publishers Daily. You can reach Erik at eriksass@gmail.com.
Bravo on this timely take on our PC-obessed society, it is ironic Americans will vote down gun control but stand firm on no "teasing" - what happened to the "Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me" peers I grew up with?
Thanks again, I enjoyed your essay- though I am surprised at the use of "de-validate" instead of "invalidate" for such a well written piece-course maybe tease you a bit. :)
AJ
I guess I'm just "of a certain age" now because I can't for the life in me remember how people got through the day before "emotional support animals" became critical. I look forward to the day that I can sue Peter Luger's because I've slipped on several types of shit laid down by the assorted menagerie of ESAs that are shuffling, scuttling, slithering and flying all over the retaurant.
Patricia Marx's article was a highlight of the last year, mixing laugh-out-loud examples and great reporting to show how we've paved another road to hell with our charitable intentions.
It is super easy, actually, way too easy, to mock people who need "emotional support" pets. The question is: why would you? Even if 50% of the emotional support pets are bogus, that still leaves 50% as real. Overall, I'd rather mock people who need "emotional support" weapons.
It's easy to "poke fun" -- and yet, eash year 41,000 people commit suicide in this country. Veterans, due to nightmares/ptsd are 40-60% more likely to commit suicide than the average american. I know of many folks who work with veterans who benefit greatly from the support of a pet - and the military has found these programs decrease the likelihood of suicide greatly. Seems like mocking a support system that works for a great many veterans would also work for members of the general public who also suffer from various forms of PTSD - -and making fun of a legitimate help only distances people from getting the support they need.
I feel quite certain that the number of ESAs making an apearance in your grocery store or on your next flight are not making legitimate contributions to otherwise emotionally fragile humans to the tune of 50% representation. Patricia Marx's piece in the New Yorker -- one of her best, I would add; and that's no small claim, as she's a talented writer and observer -- was not to mock those who have a legitimate need of an animal to get him or her through the day without committing suicide. She was mocking a system that makes it far too easy for an entitled human in yoga pants who doesn't want to have to abandon their private lives in public to do so. I realize that one might want to don her yoga pants and bring Precisous the Shitzu on her next flight to LA, but do we really risk her ending her life in a vat of Chardonay and Xanax by not allowing her to make the rest of the humanity around her suffer through its yipping and excreting in a sealed metal tube for 6 hours just because she claims to be fragile without the pooch?
What Patricia Marx gets at in her piece is how low the bar is for making a claim of needing an ESA. The solipsistic narcisim born of the self- esteem's victory over self-sacrifice for the greater good is the problem, and the point.
Who decides who is abusing the service animal laws and deserves to be mocked? What about those who have a legitimate need for a service animal, but decide not to get one out of a very real fear of being publically ridiculed by some self-described "expert"? Is their loss worth some cheap laughs?
Isn't this very similar to the common scenario of people avoiding getting needed professional mental health care because they fear ridicule?
We decide. That's what a civic structure that organizes communities is for. That's what protocols governing behavior, medical treatment, and being modern together are for. You mistake criticism of a system for insult of those who are served by that system. As I say in an earlier post, its the solipsicitc narcism of the modern American made possible by the worship of self-esteem above all else that's the larger problem. The abuse of an ESA system that is, largely, anemic at best and non-existent at worst is just a symptom of that.
I'm reminded of the excellent speech Al Pacino's character, John Milton, gives to Keanu Reeves about Eddie Barzoom:
"You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire. You build egos the size of cathedrals. Fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse. Grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god."