The Third Annual White Pages Awards
The lights are bright and the awards are White...
It’s here! The White Pages Awards, which I previously resisted calling “The Whities,” for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. It is my favorite essay to write every year because there is no reason for it to exist and no clear rules other than that I always discuss gas station pizza.
Before I begin, a quick announcement. First off, thank you to all of you who pre-ordered The Right Kind of White (as an aside: if that’s you, don’t forget to fill out the survey to receive a thank you gift). Regardless of whether you’ve done so or not, if you’d be interested in (a). receiving a free advance copy of the book and (b). joining a Zoom discussion with myself and my editor, Yahdon Israel, here’s the scoop: Yahdon does this immensely cool thing called the Advanced Reader’s Club, where a community of readers is invited to an early discussion about one of his books (mine will be on the evening of February 7th). If you’re interested and you’re on Instagram, go to Yahdon’s post, comment “Join” by tomorrow (Friday the 29th) and he’ll send you the details/next steps. If you’re not on Instagram, just email me (garrett@barnraisersproject.org) and I’ll pass your interest on to Yahdon.
Fun, right? More thoughts from me about all of my emotions about the book coming soon (a preview: ahhhhhhhhhh), but for now, the categories.
The award for “Newsletter Platform With Which I Have The Most Complicated Relationship” goes to…
SUBSTACK
You all, I’m a simple man. All I ask in my newsletter platform is that it (1). makes it easy for me to type up dumb jokes and overwrought elegies about the death of community and then press send, (2). helps people who aren’t my mom find and share my writing, (3). provides me with some idiot-proof tools for accepting payment from subscribers, and (4). does not allow active White supremacists to also receive money for writing whatever it is that Nazis write about (presumably not gas station pizza).
As you have likely heard, I am one of hundreds of writers actively petitioning Substack (which remains the best newsletter platform for items one through three and the worst at number four) to, well, change that. So far, Substack’s response has been, in essence, “we don’t want to, for vaguely free speech reasons.” That’s not unexpected. One thing about organizing is that it’s hard and takes time.
I bring this up now, in the context of this jokey annual odds and sods essay, because you’re about to hit a paywall, which means that, yes, I am one of the many anti-Nazi writers on Substack who are staying on this platform but continuing to agitate to make it better. I’ll save you all my reasons (though I’m happy to talk more upon request) except to say that
’s articulation for why she’s in that camp resonates with me as well. I have lots of respect for writers who are searching for other pastures right now, and very well may join them at some point, but I’m still in hunker down and raise a fuss mode right now. HOWEVER, the fact that I’m in that boat doesn’t mean that you all are as well. That’s to say, whether you are an existing or a new subscriber, know that I offer the following means of supporting my work without passing money to Substack:Pre-ordering my book and filling out the survey (see links above).
Making a $50 donation to the Barnraisers Project (tax deductible!)
Just emailing me something to the effect of “hey Garrett, I love being here but I’m not in a position to pay right now, can you still comp me?”
If you do any of those things, I will turn on the little paid subscriber switch for you and we'll be off to the races. If you have any questions or concerns about any of that, feel free to reach out (and if you’re super curious about how I think about money and this space, check out this financial transparency document), but in the meantime let’s get on with the rest of the awards.
The award for “Weirdest Fascist” goes to…
RON DESANTIS
Last year this award went to Blake Masters (R, Uncanny Valley) who failed both in his crusade to win a Senate seat and in his parallel attempt to convince America that he was a real boy. I miss Blake, not because he positively contributed to America’s body politic, but because at least he made me feel something (befuddlement! the thing he made me feel was befuddlement!).
I wish I could say the same for Governor Ronald Dion DeSantis. I suppose I should feel smug liberal schadenfreude at the state of his Presidential campaign (current status: failing, due to every living human being in America disliking everything about him) but it just bums me out. Yes, he’s a phenomenally bizarre dude, what with the whole pudding thing, the way he stands like he is encased in an Ikea flat pack box, and his (allegedly!) overcompensatory footwear. But the problem is: he is still the chief executive of an actual state. And he’s pulled so many awful, humanity-denying stunts in his capacity as Governor, stunts that have real implications on people’s lives. And I suppose there is good news in the fact that in all likelihood he won’t be President, but still. That’s just so much unnecessary cruelty, and for what? The privilege of genuflecting in front of a bunch of elderly Iowans and having them say “huh we still like the more entertaining mean guy?” Jeez.
But is he weird? Oh yeah, super weird. And I wasn’t about to give Vivek Ramaswamy an award. So there you go, Ron. You earned it.
The award for “Sign Of The Year (Reactionary Conservative Ice Cream Parlor Division)” goes to…