Angry Uncle Review: Kill the Booze

Finally, a friend of mine weighs in on the angry uncle:

The outspoken family member or guest is a long tradition that I’ve only witnessed sporadically because we generally all have the same left-leaning — or, if you will, sane — bent. I’ve definitely seen it though. And when you draw one, it’s no fun. There is a thing that happens at family get togethers with members of the opposite politics. It is alcohol. And alcohol has a habit of making it seem like people are not hearing you or getting your point, so you need to repeat it, more loudly and more definitively to make the intended impact. And make people understand the error of their ways. But then that seems to just make people ignore you more and so you give it another try. This repeats several cycles until it’s time to go home.  The louder you are the earlier that time seems to come.

I have conservative friends who are oblivious to the phenomenon as well because their families are just like mine — perfectly normal and reasonable people who share common beliefs — except theirs are grounded in the fundamental conviction that minorities, women and gays are taking something that’s rightfully theirs for reasons they can’t seem to pin down.

Now this is some good advice! It won’t solve everything, but how about trying an alcohol-free Thanksgiving? I once had some folks over for dinner and all we had around the house was a couple of bottles of wine. So that was it. At the end of the dinner, a couple of the guests (who we hadn’t met before) praised the food and then commented that the whole dinner had been unusually enjoyable because there hadn’t been much alcohol. I gathered that they were used to getting fairly sloshed over their meals and found a clear-headed dinner to be sort of a delightful anomaly.

In other words, this is so crazy it might work! You could go the full alcohol-free route, or do what we accidentally did, and simply have very limited alcohol. This provides two big benefits:

  • Angry Uncle Tucker won’t get plastered, which might make him a little more tractable.
  • If this doesn’t work, it’s possible that he’ll be more pissed off about the lack of booze than whatever Hillary has done lately. Given a choice, I think that listening to him grumble about liquor is preferable to grumbling about Hillary.

Now, if you’re a Mormon or Christian Scientist family, this won’t do any good since your dinners are already alcohol free. But for the rest of us, it’s good advice. And if your well-meaning nephew offers to “hop down to the store” since you’ve “run out” of beer and scotch, be sure to have a good story lined up in advance to keep him safely away from this idea. Five uncles.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate