White Noise

From the four pages of acknowledgements to chapters like “Why I’m a Virgin” and “Who Will Stand Up for Old People,” Ben Ferguson’s first book “It’s My America Too” (William Morrow, 2004, $23.95) seems more concerned with impressing those aforementioned “old people” than providing a voice for a largely un-categorized generation. At no point does Ferguson drop the pretense of being a good little Southern boy to address his generation—he’s too busy pandering to the grownups. He uses words like “whippersnapper” and “youngblood” to describe people his age. He opens every chapter with giant, grayscale American flag clip art. It is almost inconceivable that someone Ben Ferguson’s age could be this comically out of touch with, well, people his age.

Some of the book’s funniest moments manifest themselves through Ferguson’s attempts at establishing generational street cred. He makes a valiant show of referencing popular whippersnapper culture, but gets his youngblood-friendly facts confused. As part of a list of nicknames he had collected for weighing more than 270 pounds in high school, Ferguson claims the other kids called him ӑKenny,’ like Kenny on ‘South Park.’” Now anyone of any age who’s ever watched a commercial for South Park knows that Cartman’s the fat one—Kenny’s the kid in the orange parka that dies by the end of every episode. Were Ferguson’s classmates mocking him by referencing a television show they had never seen? Or is he just making up an experience to sound in touch with his generation?

At one point Ferguson actually makes the claim that “nobody had ever heard” of Janeane Garofalo, Michael Moore or Moby until they came out against the war on Iraq. He blames oral sex on Bill Clinton, the popularity of thongs on Monica Lewinsky—going so far as to say that “before it came out about Clinton and Lewinsky, if a mother had found a thong in a girl’s drawer, the girl would have been grounded.” As if Monica Lewinsky somehow managed to psychically twist every parent in the world’s disciplinary principles. Then, out of nowhere, he devotes a chapter to how totally sweet NASCAR is, sandwiched between chapters about civil duties and family values, as if that makes him a legitimate 22-year-old.

But perhaps it isn’t Ferguson’s fault. Nothing takes your finger off the pulse of your generation like being kept completely separate from it. Being homeschooled and working full-time as a talk-radio host throughout most of his teen years probably didn’t help with that pulse-thing. So we’ll forgive him for being out of touch. His writing, on the other hand, is simply unjustifiable. His sensationalist views may have put him on an accelerated track in radio since he was 13, but his ability to form an argument hasn’t left the middle-school level.

To you of legal age, I propose a Ben Ferguson drinking game; every time he repeats himself verbatim more than three times on a single page, take a shot; every time he contradicts himself, take two. I guarantee you’ll be drunk by the third chapter.

He states that Americans “acted like children in saying, ‘You’re either with us or you’re against us, and France isn’t with us,’” but goes on to say, just four pages later, that “[President Bush] was right to say that you’re either with us or against us when it comes to fighting terrorism.”

He strongly asserts his hatred of “blanket statements about ‘you conservatives’ or ‘you Republicans,’” but habitually perpetuates blanketed, one-sided statements such as “Liberals like one-sidedness.”

The only thing as ill-conceived as his arguments is his logic. Ferguson’s rantings are made up of the blandest, most predictable crap out there, the type of demagoguery typically reserved for, oh, I don’t know, C-rated AM radio. Listen all you want, it’s pretty much all white noise.

He blames unwed pregnancy, the AIDS crisis and divorce on condoms (“If we keep teaching and selling so-called safe sex, we are going to end up like Africa one day. We are going to have rampant HIV and AIDS and rampant rates of kids being born out of wedlock. Look at our divorce rate right now.”)

He even dabbles in misogyny, stating that “The world just isn’t ready for a woman U.S. president, even if we in the United States are, and having a woman as commander in chief would empower terrorists around the world. … I just don’t see a woman commander in chief walking into a room at the United Nations and giving a speech and getting the kind of respect where people really shut up and listen. I just don’t think they’re going to take her seriously.” Never mind Queen Elizabeth I. Never mind Margaret Thatcher. The world just isn’t ready.

Ben Ferguson has no credentials, no real credibility—a 13-year-old talking politics on the radio is not an expert; he’s a novelty act, a curio. Trouble is, somewhere along the line Ben bought into his own hype, and started believing he was qualified to crown himself the voice of young America. The resulting product is $23.95 in hardback. Don’t waste your money on this book—even to marvel at it. Instead, take that money and put it toward a road trip to see the world’s largest ball of twine. I guarantee it’ll have just as many interesting things to say, and it’ll be twice as articulate saying them.

Jacksonian Robert “Kit” Williamson interned at the JFP this summer. He is a freshman at Fordham University in New York City.

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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.