Ask The Galaxy Brains

Each lunar cycle, a human will be allowed to ask The Galaxy Brains a question. In this session, the human will have a choice of answers to consume from two different Galaxy Brains. Please send all questions, be they advice, desire for human-life coaching, knowledge of future or past, or merely interesting recipes,  to mm@michaelmurray.ca.

HUMAN QUESTION:

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, why do we the humans hate it so much?

ANSWER #1 FROM GALAXY BRAIN Jane Wilson:

HUMAN QUESTION:

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, why do the humans hate it so much?

ANSWER #2 FROM GALAXY BRAIN Kathryn McLeod:

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, why do we all hate it so much?

Okay, I gave this question the old college try (gee willikers, date yourself much, Galaxy Brainiac?) and I’m afraid it raised more questions than it answered, specifically: 1) is it though? and 2) do we really?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been both imitator and imitated, so I can speak with some authority when I answer 1) it isn’t, and 2) we don’t.

(By the way, when I read the question aloud to My Blond Companion he immediately imitated me but in that tone childhood bullies use when they’re hitting us with our own hands, “Why are you hitting yourself?” which I’m assuming is because he recently celebrated a birthday that puts him closer to 100 than 0, and he’s having trouble adjusting.)

Anyway, it’s hard to pin down which historical pontificator came up with “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, but once Oscar Wilde added “that mediocrity can pay to greatness” it became a putdown of the imitator and an aggrandizement of the imitated – as if everything isn’t derivative and we’re not all stardust.

Of course Oscar Wilde never heard Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” so could not have known about being stardust.

Still speaking of Oscar Wilde, he didn’t actually say on his deathbed, “Either this wallpaper goes or I do”. What he said – weeks earlier – was, “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.” So the changed quote and timing of it may not be imitation per se, but isn’t it much more fun picturing Oscar Wilde lying on his deathbed in a hotel in Paris quipping, “Either this wallpaper goes or I do”, before turning his head away from the wall and dying?

You know it, girlfriend. Oscar Wilde could only wish he had gone out thusly instead of lingering for weeks more and then muttering a Catholic prayer on his way out, as a google rabbit hole just informed me he did. Also, Christopher Hitchens was imitating Oscar Wilde when he said women couldn’t be funny (because women can have babies and babies can die – Oscar Wilde) updating Wilde to except lesbians and Jewish women – thereby adding immeasurably to the misogyny.

Sadly, The Hitch didn’t live to witness Katherine Ryan’s bit about having a nine-year-old daughter with a British accent being like living with a tiny incompetent butler, and so died holding his wrong opinion. 

But enough of Oscar Wilde (and admit it, you’re picturing Stephen Fry right now, aren’t  you, and remembering “MOAB Is My Washpot”, not Oscar Wilde and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” – which if you’re like me you’ve never read) and on to my own real life experience that 1) imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery, and 2) we don’t actually hate it at all.

So here it is. Back in a previous life I had a brief career of sorts writing op/eds for the Ottawa Citizen. This was after it had been taken over by Conrad Black, and the Ottawa Citizen went from being a regular local newspaper to an angry screed denouncing every advance in civil rights for women since we were the legal property of men.

Although, to be fair, I guess I didn’t feel inspired to write op/eds for the Ottawa Citizen before Conrad Black turned it into the Catholic Times, either, so perhaps a “Thank you, my liege” is in order after all for my brief op/ed writing career.

Anyway, a few columns in, I finally wrote one just flat out imitating David Warren, the worst offender of the multitude of men my age writing as if we were living in a Soviet gulag thanks to Feminism and not Jean Chretien’s benign dictatorship (Kidding, Liberal readers! We’re #1! We’re #1! We’re #1 and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc) and whom I had taken to reading aloud to my ex in a blowsy but unidentifiable accent until he begged me to stop.

And fair enough because David Warren was absolutely ubiquitous in the Ottawa Citizen at the time. I mean, you could read him complaining about working mothers on one page, turn it, and there he is complaining about paying child support!

Oh man, your grandpas, GenZ Feminists… arrrgh!

Honestly, an acquaintance at the time, a radio noon phone in host (albeit of CBC) with whom I was fighting against our kids’ school closure – because Mike Harris hated schools – asked me why I still subscribed. He said, “I realized one morning when I picked up the Ottawa Citizen from the front step that I was paying to be yelled at that I was a bad Canadian because I’m not an American Republican.” And while I felt the same way, the Ottawa Citizen wasn’t stupid, and had a sports section that catered to every fantasy sports league player need.

Plus, I was in it!

Anyway, writing that column is what always comes to mind re, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” because I happen to know, no, no it isn’t. I also happen to know the column I wrote was so hilarious that my ex, the aforementioned fantasy sports league player – who did not appreciate my op/ed writing career because he thought it was an absurd investment of time and energy for the money – had tears of laughter streaming down his face while reading it over my shoulder to check for any invasions of his privacy.

Oh so ixnay on that whole fantasy sports league player-ay thing-ay.

Never mind the professional satisfaction (I don’t think I believed at the time the op/ed editor, the brilliant and wise spotter of talent, Peter Simpson, would actually print it) – those tears of laughter streaming down my ex’s face were the absolute highlight of our relationship and I’ll never forget them. They were worth all the time and effort required to take David Warren to a whole ‘nother level of hilarity. And then the day it ran I heard from another Ottawa Citizen columnist, Charles Gordon, that when HE read it aloud to the newsroom in a blowsy unidentifiable accent – tears of laughter!

Oh wow, heady times, let me tell you, Dear Reader, heady times indeed. Just typing that last bit made my scalp tingle.

And as to the second part of the question, far from hating it, David Warren himself contacted the op/ed editor with the following, “Tell her she can replace me any time she wants so that I can devote more time to gazing at my navel.” Now, I’m no mind reader, but it sure doesn’t seem like any keyboards were broken typing that sentence. In fact, far from hating it, maybe he had tears of laughter streaming down his face – maybe even while reading it aloud to himself in a blowsy unidentifiable accent.

Finally, I can tell you that I stopped reading David Warren after that. I stopped reading all of them. Just like I don’t sit around hitting myself, I don’t read baby boomers who complain about Feminism.

I don’t read anybody who complains about Feminism. Enough already. Suck it up.

And a while later I stopped writing op/eds altogether because my ex was right – it was an absurd investment of time and energy for the money.

As to my experience of being the imitated, by all means, bring it – I’d love to devote more time to gazing at my navel.