Cranky people of the FB, rise up against the tyranny of the positive!
Defending the Right Not to Have a Nice Day
By WARREN ST. JOHN
. . .
Indeed, these are tough times for America's cranks, complainers and curmudgeons. Maybe because there's so much that is genuinely wrong — with threats of terrorism and a rotten economy — Americans just aren't in the mood for pessimism. And anyway, in a culture dominated by the relentlessly cheery ethos of the self-help movement, grumps and contrarians are frequently dismissed as mildly delusional, or worse, viewed as malignancies that must be isolated and cut out.
If there were any doubt that cranks are under siege, consider that on Wednesday a group calling itself Smile Mania is putting on a national event called the Great American Grump Out, which aims to do for cantankerousness what the Great American Smoke-Out did for tobacco addiction. Janice Hathy, a 55-year-old stress management consultant from Venice, Fla., has been promoting the Grump Out with a series of happiness exercises; she recently headed a "drive-by smiling" in which she and some local students stood at an intersection and flashed cardboard smiley-faces at passing motorists. On the big day, she said, she and a "grump patrol" will don clown-noses, blow bubbles and hand out bananas. ("When you look at them sideways, they look like smiles," she explained.) They plan to establish "no grumping zones" in her hometown and to urge their fellow citizens toward positivity and optimism.
Full text:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/fashion/25GRUM.html
