No one should be surprised that the pandemic sucked the fun out of much of American life these past few months, and how much of it will come back is now an open question. Leisure isn’t a priority during a national emergency, but it’s being severely undervalued.
The coronavirus pandemic has not only resulted in crashing waves of illness and death but has run roughshod over nearly everything else Americans hold dear: careers, bank accounts, mental health, the educational outcomes of the nation’s young people, and freedom from government hassling and control. Meanwhile, the sin of police brutality, combined with inexcusable episodes of civil unrest, looting, and violence, have combined to render life in major cities needlessly dangerous.
It should come as little surprise, then, that most of us are simply in no mood for fun. We have a lot on our minds, and even more weighing on our hearts.
Yet how long can any country go without satisfying its appetites, especially a country that has become accustomed, since our forefathers endured the Great Depression and won World War II, to a kind of easy living? Ever since the postwar baby boom, we have resided in a land of plenty in which itches could be easily scratched. For a while, most required nothing more than a trip to the shopping mall: Want to own a supercomputer that can be strapped to your wrist? Get that Apple Watch. Want to see a movie on a screen the size of a spaceship? Go to the multiplex. Want to feast on perfectly acceptable imitation gourmet food? Head to the food court.
Such creature comforts can sound expendable during a pandemic, but the freedom to have fun has real societal benefits. We have long understood that so-called “free play” — in which children explore, create, or just hang out unattended by supervisory grown-ups — helps learning, and the entire domestic travel industry is predicated on the idea that people are healthier when offsetting work with leisure. It’s also obvious that access to the fruits of capitalism promotes equality, as the late Tom Wolfe understood two decades ago. “By the year 2000, the term ‘working class’ had fallen into disuse in the United States, and ‘proletariat’ was so obsolete it was known only to a few bitter old Marxist academics with wire hair sprouting out of their ears,” Wolfe wrote. “The average electrician, air-conditioning mechanic, or burglar-alarm repairman lived a life that would have made the Sun King blink.”
Yet, to listen to some elected officials and countless talking heads, that electrician, mechanic, and repairman are just going to have to go on without such things. Ironically, this has become even more clear since the states have reopened parts of their economies and pitiful substitutes for our old ways have emerged. Want to get a new gas grill? Well, you’re going to have to buy one from a salesman dressed like a masked bandit from an old Western movie. Want to take your date to a rock concert? Please — just go to YouTube, where you can view “quarantine” performances by many of your favorite bands.
Legitimate efforts to protect the country from the coronavirus have set off another pandemic, one of finger-wagging that seems directly descended from that earlier American habit of Puritanism, which was given its definitive definition by H.L. Mencken: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
Examples of the anti-happiness mindset abound. Consider Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who sent a tweet inveighing against a photograph of healthy-looking young adults (no seniors in sight) congregating on Montrose Beach. Or Dr. Anthony Fauci, who insisted in an interview that he was “somewhat serious” in his stated wish to see the demise of the habit of handshaking.
Eating seems to be a favored subject for the new prohibitionists. Earlier in the summer, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reminded bars of just what sort of food they had to sell in order to operate. “The lowest level of substantive food were sandwiches,” Cuomo said, perhaps auditioning to become the next host of Kitchen Nightmares. Meanwhile, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s statewide mask order exempted persons “actively eating or drinking,” which might lead some to ask: Does nursing a drink constitute an ongoing, active act, or must beverages now be consumed in large gulps?
To be sure, we should be generous in characterizing each other’s motives during a pandemic, but at some point, don’t we have to ask ourselves whether those advocating further dilutions of everyday life are taking undue pleasure in telling us that which we must not do?
Frivolity is currently the faddish sin. The media are particularly eager to jump on ordinary, even rather lame, activities. Stories from the sports world endlessly remind us that high-fives are no-nos, and the Washington Post recently devoted an entire article to the fate of ball pits. But neither can top an August article in the New York Times: “11 Supposedly Fun Things We’ll Never Do the Same Way Again.”
Let’s start with the David Foster Wallace-inspired headline: The piece argues that such benign activities as blowing out the candles on a birthday cake or hosting games involving touchable pieces (think cards or dice) are unlikely to mount a speedy return, yet the headline writer seemingly has little sympathy for those of us who might mourn that fact. After all, these things are only “supposedly” fun. In case you harbor any residual affection for these activities, here is Tulane University epidemiology professor Susan Hassig on the horrors of extinguishing candles via breath: “Spit all over the cake has always been disgusting to me.” Not even karaoke makes the cut: “Passing a mic around a group of friends and singing … in a small room goes against the epidemiologists’ guidance to avoid singing or to do it outdoors,” the story says.
Of course, few of us would engage in reckless karaoke until the emergence of a vaccine, but that is precisely the point: Do most reasonably responsible citizens really need self-serious stories in the New York Times to remind us of all the ordinary pleasures that we are denying ourselves? Instead of rattling off restrictions, someone in a position of power or influence could at least say: “We know this sounds ridiculous, and we realize that in emphasizing the dangers of the high-five, we sound as though we are stuck in the 1990s, but …”
We are told we live in an era of cancel culture, but we seem to have simultaneously entered a period of killjoy culture. It is as though a national draft is on in the fight against the coronavirus, and buck up if you regret missing your previous life as a civilian. Yet even during World War II, we could go to a dance — it was the era that saw swing music explode, lest we forget — or see a movie or musical act. Such things are not to be taken for granted in times of want. Just ask Nancy Pelosi, who should not be condemned for wanting to experience the normalcy of a salon appointment but for her rank hypocrisy in doing it in secret as the rest of us schlubs have to serve as our own hairstylists.
Of course, it is not Mayor Lightfoot, Dr. Fauci, or even those quoted in the New York Times who have made this experience so miserable — it is the coronavirus itself. Yet it is possible to make a bad situation worse by obsessively clamping down on the few bits of humanity that perk up, or by enumerating all of the fun things that some reckon are gone forever.
Or is it just that they hope they are gone forever?
Peter Tonguette writes for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Humanities.
