Synonym for Anti-Hero: Idiot

I am turning into a House junkie, which is fitting, considering the nature of the show’s protagonist.

Last night I was exhausted from cleaning up the garage and installing wiring, and I plopped on the couch and watched two episodes. They were connected, although not consecutive. DVRs can’t work miracles; the episodes linking them were not in the box.

It works like this. House has to put in time at the free clinic, and he hates it. A big guy (David Morse) comes in and demands a VD test, commenting on House’s unpleasant, bullying nature in the process. House gets even by inserting a rectal thermometer unnecessarily. Morse figures it out, and he demands an apology. House refuses. Morse turns out to be a cop. He pulls House over for speeding, and he finds a bottle of painkillers in House’s jacket. House is arrested, and prosecution begins. He faces ten years in jail for drug crimes. Morse gives him chances to apologize and make it right, but House refuses until Morse runs out of patience. Too late, House goes into rehab, just to impress Morse and the judge. Morse doesn’t buy it, because he knows what addicts are like, and the prosecution proceeds.

That’s the bare bones of the plot.

I’ve decided House is a rotten human being. I used to think that sooner or later, something good would be found beneath the layers of slime and rot, but that’s not in the cards. He’s just bad. Last night, he whined and whined about how awful Morse and the judge and his friends were. But he never admitted responsibility or remorse, and he made no effort to change. He drove a friend to perjure herself–a felony–to get him off the hook. This, after stealing prescriptions, abusing his misguided friends, and raping a man. Sticking something in a person’s rear end after obtaining consent by fraud is rape; that’s how the law sees it. House never even brought the issue up. He didn’t just deserve to be jailed for his drug escapades. He deserved a fat lip and a prosecution for sexual battery. I was rooting for him to lose his medical license and go to the penitentiary.

House is a very good representation of a drug addict or alcoholic. They are unbearable whiners who blame the world for their problems. I don’t know why whining is connected to drug dependency. Maybe it’s because addicts can’t stand discomfort of any kind, and they are used to getting it fixed by crying and mewling. By using their misery to manipulate others. Other people accept pain and wait for it to pass. An addict deflects it onto other people, making it their problem and motivating them to get rid of it. Now that I think about it, I suppose an addict is helpless without other people around. They are so used to making other people do their bidding and support their habits, they don’t know how to do things for themselves. Is this where the concept of co-dependency comes from? I guess it is. When Walter Hudson got up over a thousand pounds, it was clear he wasn’t the only one with a problem. Somebody was bringing him the buckets of doughnuts, and that person was also sick.

Have you ever known an alcoholic who didn’t revel in self-pity? I haven’t. They don’t always do it openly, but if you spend time with a problem drinker, it will come out eventually. For me, one of the most disgusting, ugliest parts of dealing with addicts is listening to their infantile whimpering. It’s worse than driving one to rehab or changing locks or searching inside couch cushions and bric a brac for hidden pills. Those things are relatively pleasant compared to being subjected to moaning and excuses. I’m sorry to say it, but this was the dark side of reading Acidman’s blog. He wasn’t always the ruthless self-examiner he held himself out to be.

Virtually every addict is one hundred percent responsible for his addiction, but almost all of them blame other people or circumstances they can’t control. What a load. No addict who sees himself as a victim can hope to recover. If you’re hooked on something, you’re not a victim. You’re just foolish, and you need to grow up. There are only two persons who have the power to end an addiction. The addict, and God. Everyone else should be left out of it. At least, they should not be held to account for it.

I have never made another person an addict. Nothing I have ever done, no matter how bad it may have been, has caused another person to take a pill or a drink. I am completely blameless. Addicts are self-made, and they have no right to drag the rest of us into their self-inflicted misery.

Sometimes when we watch TV and movies we see heroes who are abrasive and demanding, yet who turn out to be justified, because they mean well, and they’re harder on themselves than on other people. John Wayne played this type better than any other actor. I kept telling myself House would turn out to fit the model. But he doesn’t. He’s a complete coward. He doesn’t have the guts to ask a woman out; he rents hookers instead. He never criticizes himself. When he apologizes, the show stops dead, because it’s such a rare event. He abuses people verbally, for no constructive purpose. He steals, purely to satisfy his base urges. He browbeats patients for no reason. He sabotages relationships that he finds threatening. He even refused to go to his father’s funeral, knowing it would punish his innocent mother and not the dead father who was beyond his pathetic vengeance.

He’s funny and smart and creative. But those are gifts, not virtues. In the big scheme of things, they have no lasting or deep value.

Thinking about his inability to criticize himself, I started to consider the modern cult of self-esteem. It’s a very sad religion, to which I was once a deluded adherent. Today I realized that when we tell people their salvation lies in self-esteem, we are telling them to take on the fundamental and fatal flaw of the addict. We are telling them to stop acknowledging their flaws. You can’t grow unless you can admit fault and apologize and work sincerely to change.

A personality is like a garden. And what do you do in a garden when you want the good plants to grow? You go in every day with a hoe, and you kill the bad plants. Imagine what raising tomatoes would be like, if we applied the principles of the self-esteem religion. We wouldn’t see weeds. We would see “botanical diversity.” We would see “nature manifesting its power and determination.” It would seem a thing of beauty. We would withhold the hoe. And we would get very damn few tomatoes.

Self-esteem feels good, and it gives you energy and helps you do the things you want to do. But when it goes beyond a healthy level, it causes you to ignore your own faults and overestimate your abilities. You start to think every good thing that happens to you is deserved, and that you caused it through your own strength. People who have that belief tend to wander away from God. They forget they need him. They may start to think morality is silly. They may commit crimes and mistreat other people. They sever the connection to God’s power. Then when the illusion of self-sufficiency is shattered, they don’t have the habits of faith and prayer and contrition and obedience, so they have a tough time recovering.

Self-esteem is not the answer to your problems. Psychologists tell us that self-esteem is highest in segments of society where achievement is lowest and immorality is rampant. Prison inmates, for example, tend to think very highly of themselves. You need to be confident that you can achieve. But if that confidence is to be healthy and productive, it can’t be purely self-directed. You have to have confidence that you can do what you need to do, with God’s help. That’s how man was designed to work. The self-esteem cult is idolatry, and it leads to stunted development and a dead end. A spiritual stillbirth.

Moses was extremely humble. He was too shy to talk to Pharaoh without Aaron beside him. But he parted the Red Sea and led hundreds of thousands of people across, dry-shod. He esteemed God, not himself. Moses exalted God, and God exalted Moses. That’s the healthy way to live.

I don’t know if I’ll keep watching House. It’s hard to enjoy a show when you keep hoping the “hero” gets punched in the mouth and convicted of a pile of felonies. And I’m also tired of hearing about MS and sarcoidosis. I don’t know if the medical consultants who help write the show are out of ideas or what, but it seems like every patient, sooner or later, is suspected of having MS, sarcoidosis, or both. I don’t even know what sarcoidosis is, but I know how to treat it, thanks to House.

I have enjoyed movies and shows in which moral ambiguity played a part, but we have gotten to the point where we are expected to support characters who are not merely confused, but vile. All year I’ve been watching Breaking Bad, a show in which a chemistry teacher with cancer starts making meth in order to be able to leave his family money. In the beginning, you could feel sorry for him, because of his desperation, and because he wasn’t doing the very worst things drug dealers do. Lately he’s been a real idiot, though. It was bad when he was selling poison. Now he’s urging his sidekick to commit murder, and he’s threatening rival dealers. I used to wish him well. Now I want to see him in an orange jumpsuit. Or I’d like to see him take a good, bloody pounding from a parent whose kid used his product.

Guess it’s a good thing that I watch so little TV these days.