Category: Opinion

I hate Ted Mosby, but let it be known that I do not hate the actor who portrays him, John Radnor. Or Josh Radnor. Or whatever. And this is a valid point, because I do very much like the other actors on How I Met Your Mother. I absolutely adore Alyson Hannigan (who doesn’t? I kill them). Neil Patrick Harris is the man. Jason Segel’s got chops. I don’t know much about Cobie Smulders, but she’s good looking, and she’s Canadian (I have sort of a thing for Canadians. And Jewish girls. And Indians. Just don’t ever introduce me to a Canadian Jewish Indian girl. Just don’t).

I don’t know anything about John or Josh or Jack Radnor. When I Google him, his not-as-Ted Mosby face seems alright to me. So maybe he’s the greatest actor of all time. Because when I see his Ted Mosby face, I am filled with hatred. I just don’t like that guy. He’s smug. He’s arrogant. He’s lazy. He’s a misogynist (oh yes he is god damn it. Maybe you say Barney’s the misogynist? At least Barney doesn’t fool himself and others into thinking he wants more than what he wants).

Look, I’m not prepared to do a deep analysis of the character, or the show for that matter, because I really try not to watch it. My wife watches it. My sister-in-law and her husband watch it. Everybody watches it. The people who award Emmys watch it. And I’m not saying I’m better or cool or hip because I don’t watch this hit TV show. And I’m not trying to be secretly cool by saying I’m not cool. I know I’m a loser. But I’m no Ted Stupid-Head Mosby.

I don’t like Glee, either, cause I don’t like the singing much, although when they’re not singing, when Sue Sylvester’s on the screen, that show is awesome. I don’t like The New Girl, because it’s basically a one-camera sitcom painfully stretched to the multi-camera format. I don’t like Up All Night except when Maya Rudolph is on the screen, and of course I admit Christina Applegate is an amazing actress, and c’mon, Will Arnett is a genius, so okay, I do like that show, but I don’t like that I like it. I tell you all this so you can contextualize my dislike for How I Met Your Mother based on Ted Please Catch On Fire Mosby.

I also hate the theme song to the show. Which really sucks, for me, because pretty much the whole time I’ve been writing this, I’ve had it stuck in my head.

Did you know there’s a web site called tedmosbyisajerk.com? It was made by someone on the show, not a real person, so this is the writers themselves saying the man’s not worth a small pile of bee barf. Judging from the website’s content, it’s actually based on an experience someone had with Barney, but that’s not the point. The point is, I hate him.

And I am not alone. There’s Facebook pages dedicated to hating him, blogs, web content; they call him whiny, a schmuck, self-centered. The word that keeps popping up again and again is “douche.” Don’t know if I agree with that. I mean, I do– not in the same way Schmidt on the The New Girl is a douche (re: douchebag jar) but Ted Mosby is for sure a douche in that sense of I-don’t-like-him-so-every-bad-word-is-okay-to-use-to-describe-him.

Do you hate Ted Mosby? Think carefully. Search your soul, look deep inside your heart. You do, don’t you? You watch the show, but it’s despite, not because of, Ted Cracker Please Mosby. I knew it.

Have you ever been angry at the wind? I have. I was out for a bike ride, or maybe I was trying to get somewhere on my bike, or maybe I was lost or something. I just remember at one point making a turn into a strong headwind, and finding it frustrating, and actually jerking my front wheel up and down a few times in anger.

I was young, full of hormones, took everything personally, et cetera. It’s silly, of course, to be angry at the wind. To think that the wind was blowing just to slow me down, just to keep me from my destination, to sap my enjoyment.

Been feeling that way about the internet, lately. And by “lately,” I mean for a long time now. So many vicious people on the internet, writing awful things about, well, everything. And while such viciousness is not necessarily a core definition of what the internet is, the ubiquity of it is almost too readily accepted by all.

I just read an article about how wrong it was for Shailene Woodley to wear Vibrams to a Golden Globes after party. I’m not sure if the writer was being serious or not, or purposefully hyperbolic as a kind of sardonic parody of other fashion criticism. Doesn’t matter, though, because the comments that followed where obviously not written tongue-in-cheek. Back and forth they went, calling the shoes ugly, calling anyone who didn’t recognize how good they were for you stupid, calling people who like wearing them sheep, calling people who called them sheep idiots, and so on.

I have friends who tell me I’m an idiot for reading internet comments at all. But I’m looking for more than one opinion. If I read an article about, say, Newt Gingrich’s equating food-stamps with laziness with African-American culture, I don’t trust that the article told me the whole story. So I read the comments to see if anyone can give me more information. It’s like an instant fact-check. I know I come to stories like that pre-biased, I know I’m the choir being preached to, and I want to make sure, at least, I’m not being fed dogma-food.

But instead of getting a different perspective, I end up with a brick-ton of mean-spirited perspectives. And I find it frustrating. I find myself wanting to make my own pithy comments to put all those jerk-holes in check. I want to say something brilliant and to the point, so that they’d all be forced to reply “Oh my goodness, I was a fool, you are so very right. Thank you for humbling me.”

I might as well shout at the wind for blowing. I need to remember that, for the most part, anonymity is a force of nature, and I can’t take personally anything said by someone I don’t know. (Not even if an anonymous person is directing his or her comments at me, personally.) Without being able to contextualize what’s being said with the personality of the speaker, comments like that are just a lot of hot wind.

What I really need to do is stop reading the comments on anything that’s ultimately just an opinion piece. Hoping for a fact-check on regular reporting is fine. I was an idiot to think I’d find anything useful or good in the commentary on article about footwear of the star of “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.”