Around when “get in your face” became a phrase, we also started hearing “talk to the hand.” People with hard noses get in faces; therefore, people with soft noses look for protection. For instance, they’ll raise a palm and shelter behind it. The face-inserter can gabble at the thing but the thug will get nowhere. The aggressive jerk has been flunked for conversation and now must find the exit. But no, not really. Hide yourself and you’ve lost, and that includes hiding behind your hand. Jerky boy’s face will find a way around the thing, get to one side of it or the other. Eyeballs popping with self-righteousness will seek you out; the conversation hits a dreadful new stage. Maybe “talk to the hand” is just a collective daydream, the wish scenario of people living under the reign of the face-inserters. We have to tell ourselves something.
I’m reminded of Germany in the early-1930s. The Nazis had the swastika, the Communists had the hammer and sickle, so the Social Democrats needed a fighting emblem of their own. They came up with three arrows in a bunch, the three being smartly aligned and pointing down and to the left. The party gave itself some tap dance about the three arrows striking the three enemies of the people (privilege, the Nazis, the Communists), but the image hits rather differently. It’s like an ideogram for briskly conducted failure. The sensible progressives had chosen the wrong idiom, that of the organized face-inserters. Just look at a swastika or a hammer and sickle. Those things need no backstory. They’re there to kick your eye’s ass. The three arrows are there because the soft-nosed thought they could come on like the hard-nosed.
“Talk to the hand” is the soft-nosed making the same mistake again. All right, this time we got the style right. But we’re telling ourselves the other side’s story. Disengagement isn’t a power move, not unless you’re already the person on top. Power moves aren’t for us; our course is to make them for nobody. Maybe someday we’ll get there. For now I stay home and use the block function.
Advanced analysis. Prince William’s beard mirrors the vast zone of scalp where his hairline used to be. The two entities, the beard and the zone, make a symmetrical pair that falls pleasantly on the eye. Because the problem with baldness isn’t just the lack of hair, it’s the presence of scalp. Visually, what do you do with this rogue element, this rampaging patch of nothingness? If it’s dark, it doesn’t slap the eye so distractingly. But William’s isn’t dark at all. That scalp could be a problem for someone who’s always before the public and goes without plugs or hairpiece.
But the Prince and his team found a solution. Don’t hide that blankness, finesse it. Break down the visual effect’s components and tamper where tampering does the most good. People might laugh at plugs, but they won’t laugh at a beard. There it is, defusing the impact of William's unbridled meringue countenance. Don’t shave it, man. The world needs it right where it is.