Respectable Rita - The Politics of the Impossible
It doesn't make sense!
Hello, underworld. Here’s an old piece I wrote from I don’t even know how far back when. May you guys find it as ridiculous as I do.
Fringe groups can be fun.
Fringe groups want mainstream recognition because they’re sick of slaving away at their jobs. They want to move up in society. Yet how does a fringe group achieve recognition? What is the theory behind the praxis?
It’s sort of like this.
The fringe group decides they’re going to recruit a Respectable Rita to make some magic happen. Once Respectable Rita is waving the flag, everyone can move out of Badtown. At least that’s the plan.
Respectable Rita is a bitch. Let’s get that out of the way. I have no problem admitting this, having both served as a Respectable Rita and been personally hired to discover Respectable Rita’s for questionable employers. Respectable Rita is a bitch, but the fringe group tolerates her because they want to move out of Badtown. They tell Respectable Rita what they think she wants to hear.
“We like your necklace. Your haircut reminds us of that one celebrity. Game of Thrones? More like Game of You, Rita!"
Yet people forget this one basic thing: Respectable Rita has her own fringe group. She’s serving as the Respectable Rita for your fringe group in order to get her own fringe group off the ground. Respectable Rita doesn’t care if you compliment her, but she’ll still pay lip service to your cause.
Like clockwork, the fringe group begins to argue and whine.
“Everything was chill until Respectable Rita came along. She doesn’t really understand our movement.”
“Just deal with her, bro.”
Eventually:
Someone will sleep with Respectable Rita
Someone will get jealous
Someone will punch someone else
Someone will call the authorities
Someone will end up in jail
Respectable Rita was just another anti-social actor in the end, but you trusted her to make you popular. This was all your fault because you fell for her game. Now you’re a mere statistic, but at least she waved the flag one time at that party. Remember how hot it was when she screamed your agenda?
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Bravissima... Excellent post!
I have seen countless variations on Rita, and adjacent corollaries to Rita. You've managed to depict a quietly destructive trope that generally goes unspoken for two main reasons:
1. Because even to see Rita requires the ability to see the greater chessboard, and to see one's own fringe group as only a player in a greater ecosystem. To spot a Rita also requires an eidetic memory, because by definition, she enters seeming one way, and only reveals herself over time.
2. Because those people most able even to recognize a "Rita in their midst", are the most likely to have been spotted by Rita, as brighter bulbs in the group... and they are prophylactically compromised by her.
I would venture that the people most likely to observe somebody pulling a Rita are those who are lurking a bit at the fringes of the fringe, and don't feel compelled to let others know how much they are observing.
A tale as old as time!