Life is full of reality. So much, in fact, that some folks no longer know how to distinguish it from acting. The tele is crowded with overproduced reality (can reality be under produced, or produced at all?), to the detriment of bona fide theater.

All In The Family, a hit comedy show in the seventies, featured a main character, Archie Bunker, who was a racist, misogynist, anti-semite, political ultra-conservative and idiot. When discussing his beliefs, Archie always tried to explain them with twisted logic-- which he thought made perfect sense. The show used the character to put on display how ridiculous and laughable such racist beliefs are.

It was well-known, however, that Carroll O'Conner, the actor who played Archie Bunker, was , to put it in the most extreme terms, a bleeding-heart liberal. I use that phrase not as an insult to O'Conner, but to demonstrate that, in his most famous role, he was indeed acting. And that his portrayal of a character with opposite views of his own was in no way a reflection of himself. It was, in fact, an effort to caricature people who did believe as Archie Bunker; that by playing a bigot himself, he could show how foolish these people were and how irrational their logic was. His character was meant to convey the very opposite of what he said and believed. It was a comedic satire.

A bit of a gear-shift here, but I promise to connect everything.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population. In short, Malthus' treatise explains how humans were on the verge of extremely rapid population growth. He then went on to say that, unchecked, the population would reach a level which was not sustainable-- that a lack of jobs would lead to poverty and a shortage of food resources would lead to famine. Malthus suggested several things that could curb this exponential growth in population, and thereby avoid disaster: war, pestilence, plague, murder, homosexuality (that's right, we're the cure!), marrying later in life, sexual abstinence before marriage, birth control, etc. This led to several responses to Malthus' work, including one called, On the Possibility of Limiting Populousness. This pamphlet satirically suggested the mandatory gassing of babies to control the population. Also, the term Malthusian catastrophe was coined to describe an event with severe consequences on civilization, which would return man to a type of subsistence-level living not seen since before the Industrial Revolution. Though he described the event as unfolding over a very long period of time, many people use the phrase to describe such things as collisions from comets, à la Deep Impact, asteroids, nuclear war, and other events that would have a more immediate impact-- not unlike what happened to the dinosaurs. Malthus' work was very influential on other thinkers of the time, most notably Charles Darwin and his theory of the survival of the fittest. Darwin's theories would, in turn, contribute to Social Darwinism, eugenics, and even to the scientific thinking of Hitler and the Nazis.

Malthus was correct on several points. First, the human population has begun growing exponentially. This is due mainly to the improved ability of man to produce and transport food on a large scale, a benefit of the Industrial Revolution.

The above graph shows how the population exploded after the Industrial Revolution. What it does not show is the impact of the Black Death, a Malthusian catastrophe which killed as many as 60% of the population of Europe in the fourteenth century. Malthus was also correct in believing such natural events would help control the population.

Third, Malthus was correct in believing that population growth would outpace food production. While the population of man has increased exponentially, meaning it doubles itself over the same number of years (for instance, currently, every 61 years the population of Earth doubles), the increase in food production has a linear growth pattern (every set number of years the production grows by the same amount). The differences in these growth models will eventually lead to a shortage of food. Already, the amount of grain, a staple food, produced for each person on Earth is decreasing.

The rate of growth of man's population has slowed, but still it grows. According to the World Population Clock, at the time of my writing this, it is estimated to be 6,672,035,414.

So the question is, How many people can the Earth sustain?

According to John Barker's 2002 article, How Many People Can the Earth Support?, most scientist who estimate such things believe the number to be between two and fourteen billion. Perhaps more important is how the population will effect the quality of living. At fourteen billion people, Malthus' assertion that there would be an extremely large number of poor people is correct. The great majority of us would be on survival rations. The middle class of the United States, Canada, the UK and other comparatively wealthy nations, have come to expect a certain level of comfortable living. We have more than enough food to feed ourselves and families. The peoples of other less fortunate nations aspire to our level of wealth.

How many people could the Earth sustain if everyone lived as we in the United States do? Two billion.

Yes, were every person on Earth to have the food and resources of the average American, there could be a maximum population of two billion. There are currently nearly seven billion.

This has several implications. The first is that, if it remains that the world is divided into rich and poor, haves and have-nots, Americans might be able to continue living as they do as long as billions of other people are near starving. If the population continues to increase, the likelihood of famine and plague increase, which would then help control further growth. Or, the consumption of food and resources for the well off, like the Americans, would need to decrease significantly to accommodate the consumption of resources of the growing population. Or, some major event, a Malthusian catastrophe must occur to dramatically reduce the number of mouths to feed.

So you see, the satirical On the Possibility of Limiting Populousness points out with hyperbolic suggestions of mass murder, that Malthus's ideas, while based in rational science, could be taken to inhuman extremes. It was suggested even on it's publication that his ideas on limiting growth, such as marriage controls and birth control, were seen as affecting the poor people-- that it wasn't the rich who needed to curb their growth, but the lower classes of society.

So how might I tie Thomas Malthus to Archie Bunker?

I refer you now to my video, White People Stink. It was, for 13 months, on YouTube, but I have now removed it from that site. For those of you who managed to see it, you probably now understand how these seemingly disparate topics-- acting, All In The Family and the theories of Thomas Malthus-- tie together. For those of you who haven't, I will now explain.

White People Stink is a darkly humorous and ironical satire of racists, bigots, xenophobes and hate-filled people. My attitudes and ideas expressed in the video are based largely on Carrol O'Conner's Archie Bunker character in All In The Family. Trying to avoid a direct imitation-- I am much younger and the times are different-- I tried to personalize it a bit. The video was scripted, rehearsed and edited. It was not an off-the-cuff rant meant to be taken at face value, but to demonstrate, like Archie Bunker, how ludicrous such beliefs are. Also like Archie, I attempted to rationalize my ideas with obviously twisted logic. It was my belief that any reasonable person would view the video and understand that I was not this character, and that I was not saying anything to be offensive, but using an offensive character to make the point of how absurd such hate-filled, ignorant people are.

Apparently there are people among us who do not think, however. The reality television mentality has set in, and they no longer can grasp that Jack McCoy is not really the District Attorney of New York, that Eric Cartman being a jerk has a point beyond making you laugh, that Stephen Colbert is making fun of the Republicans by pretending to be one, that all those folks on Lost aren't really trapped on an island or that Hugh Laurie isn't really a doctor. Everything is Big Brother, Survivor, Real World, The Real Housewives of Orange County, etc., etc., etc. Everything is real and literal. In reality television, there is no need to understand or comprehend because there is no meaning. What point is made by David versus David in a singing competition? What statement is made by watching an interior designer stage a house for resale? Do we watch people eating worms for money to learn something? No. There is definitely a sociological statement in the fact that America is addicted to such shows like a voyeur at a hole-in-the-wall, but nothing of significance is learned by the viewer.

At the beginning of White People Stink, I set up the rest of the video by telling the story of my Jeep being broken into. Parts of that story were true, and I found it a good way to lead into the point I set out to make. I chose such an event because bigots often use such bad-luck happenings as reasons to hate people, and blame them, without proof, for the event itself. Lose your job? The Mexicans did it. Crime going up? Black folks cause it. Society in a moral downward spiral? Non-Christians are bad people. Nephew is gay? The other gays recruited him. Jesus suffered? The Jews did it. It never makes sense, but people believe it and hate whole groups of people because of flawed logic.

In explaining the Jeep break-in, I, in character, decide to blame certain groups of people. People not like me. The others. In an attempt to add logic to my hatred, I describe the theories of Thomas Malthus. I explain that there are too many people in the world, and that to avoid starvation we must kill four billion people. In effect, I attempt to avoid a Malthusian catastrophe by creating one. With the twisted logic of a xenophobic racist, I decide that the people who should die are the very people my character seems to hate. I give reasons which are so flawed and unreasonable that anyone should be able to see them as such. Everyone knew that Archie Bunker was a racist to show that racism was ignorant, and every person with half-a-brain should be able to tell that my character in White People Stink is of the very same mold for the very same reason.

As a safe-guard against people taking the video at face value, I, at the end of the video, suggest such things like having only topless Vietnamese women in Congress. Is that not over-the-top enough for the ignorant to finally understand the whole video was satire? Given the nature of my sexual inclinations, you should realize I would truly not be interested in a Senate of Boobs. (A Senate of boobs of the female mammary gland variety, not the house of fools, or boobs, that we keep electing.)

Overestimating the intelligence of my viewing audience was my mistake. People often have trouble understanding or even recognizing satire and irony. Or my acting was too good (Ha!). Or my script was too well-written (Double Ha!).

If anybody would have said to Carrol O'Conner, How can you be such a racist?, I'm not sure how he would have answered. Maybe he wouldn't have answered at all. Would, It's just acting, be enough to make them realize, Hey! It's just acting!. Could It is irony, which means you are to take my point to be the opposite of what I say, bring an epiphany of understanding?

Well, if my experience is any indication, then I say no.

I have recently learned that (at least) two of the employees of my former employer are examples of those people who cannot grasp the deeper meaning of White People Stink. Among other things, I was referred to as somebody like that, after mentioning my (ex)boyfriend at the outset of the video. It was used in the context of, I am uncomfortable working with somebody like that. Also, it was said that, it's usually smart people who bring guns to work and shoot people. I don't even know how to respond to that. I believe in strict gun control laws. It is cliché to say, But I have friends like that, but indeed, I have friends like that. Every type of person I mentioned in White People Stink can be found in my group of friends. Even homeless people. Well, formerly homeless. The video's title, taken from a line in the script, is White People Stink, and I am white! Reason, however, has no place in some minds. They are happy, even obstinate, in their ignorance. They refuse to understand.

And so it was, five days after being promoted, after never being late for work, after missing only two days out of 200 (due to illness), after never having a written or verbal reprimand, after receiving high praise in all of my reviews, after performing (if I might say so myself) beyond my duty and with excellence, I was dismissed because I was somebody like that.