The Taylor Swift phenomenon is a creation of affluence. If these young women had a husband and three children to take care of, they wouldn't have much time for Taylor Swift.
Nah. Housewives can be music fans too. My mother back in the day had her favorites, albeit mainly from the Big Band era that was her youth. Though she liked some more contemporary stuff too ("Sweet Caroline" was a favorite of hers-- I think of her when I hear that still).
I am going to venture that this is the least important Presidential election of modern times. Both leading candiates are loser hacks. Each hated by a different half of the population. Congressional gridlock will prevent major legislation. (I think is a plus; most of the time the legislature has no idea what they are doing.)
Whoever is elected will rule by Imperial Ukase which can be repealed by their successor the first day in office in January of 2029. The already happened to Trump when Biden assumed office in 2021.
2024 is the last 'Boomer Election'. Millions of us will be gone by November of 2028. At that time a very different America will vote and a new era will begin.
Yes, we have lost Respect… It used to be that opposing parties brought balance, when all peoples in the USA appreciated that and still regarding their neighbors as good friends worthy of respect. All we can do is model that and request it from our leaders.
"Congressional gridlock will prevent major legislation"
Doesn't matter. Massive change since at least Obama comes about from selectively enforcing the law (the border, anyone?), executive actions and sedimenting your people in massive executive agencies to effect new interpretations of rules that are effectively new, binding legislation.
What "massive change" have we seen, other than those changes predicated either on the public changing its mind (e..g, on SSM), or some external event overriding our preferences (e.g., Covid)? I see far more continuity in public affairs over time (certainly since Y2K) than change. Of things that were done politically, the ACA would be the top of the list. Too much else, including things that were ballyhooed as "big deals" (e.g., financial reforms after the 2008 meltdown), has been more business as usual than game changing.
I’ve made a similar argument but I’m probably wrong. The reason I’m wrong is because so much is now done through presidential order or is a product of regulations administered by appointed agencies. So unfortunately congressional gridlock which I agree tends to be good thing isn’t enough.
I’ve made a similar argument but I’m probably wrong. The reason I’m wrong is because so much is now done through presidential order or is a product of regulations administered by appointed agencies. So unfortunately congressional gridlock which I agree tends to be good thing isn’t enough.
I would like to think that as Boomers we have influenced ‘those (younger) with ears to hear’. In this case there are others to carry the torch and influence their own era with the sturdy American constitution we have known from our upbringing.
Maybe but I don’t remember the Democrats opposing that war( by and large).Further, I don’t know that Gore’s immense sense of his world historical importance would have allowed him to pass up the opportunity to wage a war.
Oh, he would have invaded Afghanistan! But Iraq was really a project of Dick Cheney and his colleagues. That influence would have been absent in a Gore administration.
Jon, I believe the original invasion of Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda and their protectors, the Taliban, was universally supported in America in 2001. Nation-building is another story.
This is very sharp. If Congress remains as tight as it is right now--well, that's how the system works. On the other hand Dreher's post is about non-political politics, and that stuff is anything but inconsequential.
I somewhat agree, but when I think about it, what we've seen in many elections--at least in my lifetime--was a choice between two wings of the same oligarchical system.
Trump, for all of his divisiveness and personal lack of integrity, is a disrupter. He may have been ultimately ineffective in his first term (and I have no expectation of him being more effective in a second term), but he at least did challenge the narrative.
Before Trump, the choice was more "vote Republican, and vote for lower taxes and a bigger military, and noise about 'family values'"; or "vote Democrat, and vote for more social programs and noise about 'social justice'". In the end, the policies changed a bit around the edges, but were left fundamentally unchanged--deficit spending, tax breaks for the wealthiest, and interventionism evermore. At least Trump killed fewer people, and that's not nothing--though that policy earned more ire than anything else he did, and that among the people with the most real power.
So if, say, Romney or McCain won instead of Obama--do you really think things would be substantially better in any meaningful way? Or Gore or Kerry instead of W?
It's been mere political theatre for years. A true disrupter--say a Trump that was willing to work hard and had a coherent idea for America--may arise, but it's doubtful if he or she will ever be given a real chance to make a difference.
Living in Maryland in 2008, I didn't have to vote for two men I disliked intensely. But I preferred Obama to McCain because of McCain's fervent devotion to war. Had McCain won in 2008, the Republicans would have been reduced radically in Congress and America would still be in hot wars in the Middle East and likely in Iran. McCain was George C. Scott's character in "Dr. Strangelove", General Buck Turgidson.
Obama, however, went on to take the lead in destroying Lybia, expand the droning campaign, fail to withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan, and participated in the war on Yemen.
Perhaps McCain would have been more reckless and would have sent more ground troops, and even start war with Iran...so maybe Obama was the lesser evil. But he certainly was a war-monger...just without the stupid "Bomb bomb bomb Iran" schtick.
This reminds me of a joke that is older than I care to say. But I'll repurpose it for the occasion:
"They told me if I voted for McCain we'd still be in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we'd be involved in new wars in the Middle East and North Africa. Well, sure enough, I voted for McCain and that's exactly what happened."
Try telling Obama fans that he and Hillary Clinton destroyed Libya and they look at you like you're crazy. It isn't even that they approved of it at the time or rationalize it in hindsight. They literally don't know or remember it happened.
It was not the US that took the lead on Libya but rather Italy (the former colonial power) and France, also with old ties to northern Africa. Though yes, once things were in motion the US jumped in with both feet.
And by the have no clue that the destabilization of Libya helped destabilize Mali and Niger but having never heard of those countries or heard of people called Turaegs , they wouldn’t know.
For what it's worth, I think this election is important for a handful of big issues, such as immigration and overseas wars. But for so many other issues, the real action is local. It's amazing what state and county legislators are getting away with while everyone is hung up on the national political shit-show. If I were running for a county or state position, I'd be overjoyed that people are obsessed with the Trump/Biden farce....
I very much agree here. Much of what we deal with in our own lives comes out of the state capital or city hall. We're not going to get answers from Washington on, say, crime or homelessness (and we shouldn't look to DC for that type of stuff either)
As others are pointing out, Congress is no longer where the action is. Congress has not functioned in its proper role for decades. The country is run by the unelected bureaucrats of the administrative state, in coordination with the expert class in their perches at the media, big tech, education, grant/grift-sucking "companies", etc, etc.
A Republican president can slightly pare some of the excesses of the administrative state back for a few years, but nothing more (the "non-partisan civil servants" will make damn sure the impact is limited). But a Democratic president can go full bore with abuses of executive power (yes the courts will slap some of it back, but that takes years, and meanwhile the Overton window continues to expand), and the denizens of the administrative state will slam into overdrive putting it all into action.
So the election does make a difference, just not in the actual rule of law way the Founders intended. (To be clear I think there is no positive outcome to be had coming up.)
They only get to the Supreme Court in the first place by abuses of executive power and/or poor legislation by Congress in the past. And I don't mean just "big national issues" - I mean the general running of the country. The agencies engage in "rulemaking" (effectively lawmaking) all the time (not only do they act in lieu of the self-emasculated legislative branch, they often even have their own internal "courts" to act as their own judicial branch, deciding on the fate of companies under the "laws" they themselves "wrote"). This is all based on 100 years of progressive-left ratcheting under decades of Dem majorities in Congress and a Supreme Court that sang their tune.
My hope is that the current Court eventually pushes this all back into line, but there's a long way to go with 100 years of precedent on the other side. Just tearing out Chevron, for example (ironically a decision hailed by the right at first), would be a baby step.
No, tearing up Chrevron would hamstring too much. What we really did is not some court rulings (that's just more rule bu unelected elite) but a Congress that does the job we elect and pay it for. If bureaucrats are overstepping their delegated authority, then it is Congress' job toi slap that down. Anything else just risks cures worse than the disease.
Legislation is almost impossible in a culture in which niche media preach to their choirs, thus creating a public discourse with zero shared information. Right?
Trump is a media guy. Swift is a media figure/creation. There has already been discussion/rumors how she will be used by the Biden campaign. No idea if there is an "organized" effort among the Trump faithful, but given there is seemingly organized efforts among the Dems and Swift, well...
It is the actions of media and celebs, and talking about it even this much has already bored me.
I think you are right. The game is being choreographed even as we type. Travis Kelce will catch a thirty yard touchdown on the last play of the game and Taylor Swift and Kelce will embrace at the fifty yard line as the confetti flutters from the skies.
Oh, please - both teams have won multiple Superbowls. And if it weren't for the flaming romance between Swift and Kelce, I'd expect the uproar to be about the San Francisco 49ers, because "San Francisco" - GASP! They'll be out there in drag!
You must admit that if there was an engagement, a traditional marriage, and pregnancy, within the next say 14 months, it would do wonders for young white girls going forward....LOL!
I'm completely uninterested in Taylor Swift, but when I see photos of her with Kelcie, I see what appears to be a very sincere smile on the face of a young woman whose job requires her to fake-smile a lot. I'm wary of being jerked around by PR campaigns, but it seems real to me.
Even with no pregnancy it would be a wholesome influence-- instead of the two just moving in with together.
Swift has had some songs about bad romances. "We are never ever getting back together" is a classic f***-you break up song. "I Knew You Were Trouble" is about the mistake of going after a "bad boy".
I do think Taylor Swift is self-created. She has always been very savvy about her image and with how to connect to her fan base using media. If I remember correctly, I read in a “New Yorker” article from about 9 or 10 years ago that she was mining Twitter hashtags at her concerts, prior to going up on stage, and selecting tweets from her fans in the audience to broadcast over the Jumbotron, sending the girls into paroxysms of squeals and screams. She’s been a good songwriter since her teens.
I’m not a fan. And other than the song “Mean,” along with its accompanying video— which I think is brilliant—I really don’t care for any of her music. Yes, at this moment, she’s overhyped, and I’ll attribute the overhype to the media and the arrested adolescence of the females who make up the rank and file of media. But she’s the farthest thing from being an empty suit, dress, leotard, or what have you.
I decided to give one of her albums a listen on my morning walk just now. A song called "Exile" got my attention—but that was a duet with Bon Iver, who I think is great.
Good call! Huh, Big Red Machine? Wiki says that they're a collaboration between Justin Vernon (alias Bon Iver) and one of the guys from The National, so now I have their music to check out as well.
p.s. her two quarantine albums (folklore and evermore) were actually long distance collaborations with Aaron Dessner from the National. Both are very different from her pop anthems.
I’m not a fan either, don’t hate it (was exposed while my daughter was at the proper age a while back), but I do quite like Ryan Adams's entire album redo of her "1989". That made me think - when the music was performed in a different style I actually liked - that there was something there, at least with songwriting talent. Some of the songs, when redone by Adams, almost had an early Springsteen thing about them.
As a man approaching 70 I am not a Swift fan, but her songs are quite good as pop numbers and have seen stories about her doing a substantial amount of giving. I do not understand why her ticket prices are so high, though, many of her fans are not rich.
I mostly listen to bluegrass these days, not a Swift fan but I to some extent understand her appeal. Works hard too and doesn't seem to be sleazy as some popular artists are.
As a 70 y.o. musician, I can attest that I've heard just one song from Taylor Shvitz- her very first hit, the one about the short shorts, where she sings, 'You belong to me- hee-hee.' Can't hold a note. That was enough for me.
I spent years playing in country (among other) bands and as far as I'm concerned, country went into the ditch around 2000 with the the rise of people like Eileen (Shania) Twain , too much Garth channeling Styx, and the record companies ditching their mid-to-lower profitable artists (eg Pam Tillis.)
Everything got formularized and lyrics became (to me) a question of how many words can you fit into three minutes.
And the singers (especially females) seemingly started to compete with Celine Dion to see whose voice has more power.
To be sure, there are some really good country artists out there now- Kacey Musgraves, Jason Isbel, Lyle Lovett (hopefully still out there) , John Fullbright, etc. but you have to find them. I hope Vince Gill and Patty Loveless are still at it..,,,And the influence of 'rap' and hippity hop has been most destructive.
I’m not sure how Swift is any different than any other Post WW2 pop culture phenomenon: Beatlemania, Elvis, 90s Boy Bands, etc. I like the parallels to Hooligan Firms to explain how people can get caught up in something that makes them feel good and empowered. I think the article makes a nice tie-in there.
I simply think the Trump camp is overplaying this card, like they overplay everything. As Rod says right away, if you’re going to vote based on a celebrity endorsement, you’ve probably already decided Trump isn’t your man. Move on, end of story. Yes, you have a billionaire pop star with followers who might not like Trump. Who cares? Most people in her class don’t. The Trump crowd does not seem to understand that half the country doesn’t like Trump. I’m likely going to vote for him to kick Joe out, but I’m not happy about it.
Swift is pretty inoffensive as far as pop divas go. By today’s standards her music is pretty clean, not at all violent, and kind of plastic. Perfect for the times in which we live.
I’m dreading the next 10 months. This is an absolutely unnecessary election. Everyone knows how they feel about the two men helming the tickets. I think we conservatives are going to have our head in our hands a lot, and I think it’s going to be gas on the dumpster fire of decline. Swift is the least of our problems.
You know Sam Kriss? Opener to his recent meditation:
“Taylor Swift is, by any sensible measure, the most famous person in the world. The actual leaders of actual countries beg her to visit their dying lands, put on a show, make their miserable people spend some of their miserable money, maybe nudge the whole economy just a few points out of recession. When a war breaks out in Asia, both sides immediately try to argue that they’re fighting on the side of Taylor Swift. She is bigger than Elvis, bigger than the Beatles, bigger than God. She has blasted herself on a jet of pure sugary Americana into every quiet crevice of global culture. She provides the texture of daily life for thirteen year old Indonesian girls with hijabs and hard scraping eyes. There are swathes of rebel bushland in central Africa where children tear the guts out the earth at gunpoint and the central government has no power at all—but Taylor Swift does. In my travels across China, the only Western music you’d ever hear playing anywhere belonged to Taylor Swift. She’s not a solitary human being; she’s Coca-Cola. She has fundamentally changed the inner workings of the record industry, show ticketing, intellectual property—why not? Let’s say music theory too. She invented tone. She invented pitch. Taylor Swift seems destined to be remembered by our drooling, mud-eating descendants as a kind of culture hero, the mythical source of everything left for them to inherit. First was she who plucked strings and made pleasant sounds. Who taught man to spin thread and mark the hours of the sun.”
Hey, speaking of crackpot satirists, I picked up your book. Haha. I looked at the preview, and my eyes fell upon the line, "The rhino is a natural gnostic."
Wow, that is quite the fever dream of a story: the paranoia makes me think of Pynchon, like in *The Crying of Lot 49*.
Hm, I wonder if Taylor Swift is some sort of Rorschach test? For my part, I just see a rather normal woman who writes a lot of decent songs and sometimes even a few really good ones, when she veers into folk and indie rock. I wonder what that says about my relative level of derangement. . . . .
If someone asks whether Eve and Adam had belly buttons, I say yes; and if they ask why, I say, "For decoration." A ludicrious question deserves an answer in kind.
WE had peace with Trump… he has the talent of international relations, its called diplomacy. We had a thriving economy and low UE. We had grumblers, but as always they silently participated in the benefits while other side of mouth engaged in cut.throat. People can be better!
Actually, I think he did a pretty good job handling Kim, who is now making more noises than before. And he had the madman's gambit working in his favor: people didn't wanna mess around too much because they didn't know what he might do—and it was persuasive, since he also did not know.
It's interesting you bring up the Beatles. As somebody with kids who came of age in the zeros I can say with confidence TayTay's succession of hits has been like NOTHING since the Lennon and McCartney 1964-1970. And they quit!
I don't think the boys were glum to see the Beatles; it's just that they came to see a concert and it was drowned out by the girls' screams.
They unearthed a recording of a concert the Beatles gave at a private boarding school in Liverpool just as they were really hitting the big time. The recording was awful, but you could actually hear the band because it was an all-boys school. With improvements in technology, the "mix" can finally be corrected.
True, but I think the same could be said a few years earlier when boys knew their girlfriends would gladly dump them for Elvis or Ricky Nelson.
I think the only period in which girls wouldn't dump their boyfriends for some pop musicians would be in the '70s. I can't really visualize girls dumping their guys to be with Frank Zappa, Donald Fagen (Steely Dan), Simon & Bullwinkle, or Iggy Pop.
John Lee Hooker...same thing....brilliant
Hank Williams Sr. was an American musical genius.
The Taylor Swift phenomenon is a creation of affluence. If these young women had a husband and three children to take care of, they wouldn't have much time for Taylor Swift.
Well, my sister-in-law would be an exception to your hypothesis, though admittedly she has a very gainfully employed husband.
Nah. Housewives can be music fans too. My mother back in the day had her favorites, albeit mainly from the Big Band era that was her youth. Though she liked some more contemporary stuff too ("Sweet Caroline" was a favorite of hers-- I think of her when I hear that still).
It's a current day version of bread and circuses. The parallels to Rome's decline are there.
I am going to venture that this is the least important Presidential election of modern times. Both leading candiates are loser hacks. Each hated by a different half of the population. Congressional gridlock will prevent major legislation. (I think is a plus; most of the time the legislature has no idea what they are doing.)
Whoever is elected will rule by Imperial Ukase which can be repealed by their successor the first day in office in January of 2029. The already happened to Trump when Biden assumed office in 2021.
2024 is the last 'Boomer Election'. Millions of us will be gone by November of 2028. At that time a very different America will vote and a new era will begin.
Yes, we have lost Respect… It used to be that opposing parties brought balance, when all peoples in the USA appreciated that and still regarding their neighbors as good friends worthy of respect. All we can do is model that and request it from our leaders.
"Congressional gridlock will prevent major legislation"
Doesn't matter. Massive change since at least Obama comes about from selectively enforcing the law (the border, anyone?), executive actions and sedimenting your people in massive executive agencies to effect new interpretations of rules that are effectively new, binding legislation.
Substantial agreement.
What "massive change" have we seen, other than those changes predicated either on the public changing its mind (e..g, on SSM), or some external event overriding our preferences (e.g., Covid)? I see far more continuity in public affairs over time (certainly since Y2K) than change. Of things that were done politically, the ACA would be the top of the list. Too much else, including things that were ballyhooed as "big deals" (e.g., financial reforms after the 2008 meltdown), has been more business as usual than game changing.
You make a good case for this.
I’ve made a similar argument but I’m probably wrong. The reason I’m wrong is because so much is now done through presidential order or is a product of regulations administered by appointed agencies. So unfortunately congressional gridlock which I agree tends to be good thing isn’t enough.
I’ve made a similar argument but I’m probably wrong. The reason I’m wrong is because so much is now done through presidential order or is a product of regulations administered by appointed agencies. So unfortunately congressional gridlock which I agree tends to be good thing isn’t enough.
"...most of the time the legislature has no idea what they are doing."
The more pages are in a bill, the truer this is.
I would like to think that as Boomers we have influenced ‘those (younger) with ears to hear’. In this case there are others to carry the torch and influence their own era with the sturdy American constitution we have known from our upbringing.
Many of the younger people (particularly some of the college educated) hate Boomers and Boomer Culture.
The Bush-Gore election was of little importance except in the negative. I don't think Gore would have been foolish enough to invade Iraq.
Maybe but I don’t remember the Democrats opposing that war( by and large).Further, I don’t know that Gore’s immense sense of his world historical importance would have allowed him to pass up the opportunity to wage a war.
Oh, he would have invaded Afghanistan! But Iraq was really a project of Dick Cheney and his colleagues. That influence would have been absent in a Gore administration.
Jon, I believe the original invasion of Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda and their protectors, the Taliban, was universally supported in America in 2001. Nation-building is another story.
Six Republican Congresmen voted against the Declaration of War. 3 of them were not re-elected. 3 were - I like Ron Paul.
This is very sharp. If Congress remains as tight as it is right now--well, that's how the system works. On the other hand Dreher's post is about non-political politics, and that stuff is anything but inconsequential.
I somewhat agree, but when I think about it, what we've seen in many elections--at least in my lifetime--was a choice between two wings of the same oligarchical system.
Trump, for all of his divisiveness and personal lack of integrity, is a disrupter. He may have been ultimately ineffective in his first term (and I have no expectation of him being more effective in a second term), but he at least did challenge the narrative.
Before Trump, the choice was more "vote Republican, and vote for lower taxes and a bigger military, and noise about 'family values'"; or "vote Democrat, and vote for more social programs and noise about 'social justice'". In the end, the policies changed a bit around the edges, but were left fundamentally unchanged--deficit spending, tax breaks for the wealthiest, and interventionism evermore. At least Trump killed fewer people, and that's not nothing--though that policy earned more ire than anything else he did, and that among the people with the most real power.
So if, say, Romney or McCain won instead of Obama--do you really think things would be substantially better in any meaningful way? Or Gore or Kerry instead of W?
It's been mere political theatre for years. A true disrupter--say a Trump that was willing to work hard and had a coherent idea for America--may arise, but it's doubtful if he or she will ever be given a real chance to make a difference.
Living in Maryland in 2008, I didn't have to vote for two men I disliked intensely. But I preferred Obama to McCain because of McCain's fervent devotion to war. Had McCain won in 2008, the Republicans would have been reduced radically in Congress and America would still be in hot wars in the Middle East and likely in Iran. McCain was George C. Scott's character in "Dr. Strangelove", General Buck Turgidson.
Obama, however, went on to take the lead in destroying Lybia, expand the droning campaign, fail to withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan, and participated in the war on Yemen.
Perhaps McCain would have been more reckless and would have sent more ground troops, and even start war with Iran...so maybe Obama was the lesser evil. But he certainly was a war-monger...just without the stupid "Bomb bomb bomb Iran" schtick.
This reminds me of a joke that is older than I care to say. But I'll repurpose it for the occasion:
"They told me if I voted for McCain we'd still be in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we'd be involved in new wars in the Middle East and North Africa. Well, sure enough, I voted for McCain and that's exactly what happened."
Try telling Obama fans that he and Hillary Clinton destroyed Libya and they look at you like you're crazy. It isn't even that they approved of it at the time or rationalize it in hindsight. They literally don't know or remember it happened.
But Obama was so cool and his dress pants were nicely pressed. So said David Brooks.
Like MLK he spoke pretty words...
It was not the US that took the lead on Libya but rather Italy (the former colonial power) and France, also with old ties to northern Africa. Though yes, once things were in motion the US jumped in with both feet.
And by the have no clue that the destabilization of Libya helped destabilize Mali and Niger but having never heard of those countries or heard of people called Turaegs , they wouldn’t know.
Obama did wind down our Iraq involvement-- and I remember voices on the Right (though not Rod, to be clear) harshly criticizing him for it.
Yet we still have 2500 troops there...why? https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-03-15/why-us-troops-remain-in-iraq-20-years-after-shock-and-awe
The article you link to appears to be almost a year old. I looked for more recent data and couldn't find any deployments in Iraq in 2024.
McCain would have been a Disaster as president. War 'r US.
For what it's worth, I think this election is important for a handful of big issues, such as immigration and overseas wars. But for so many other issues, the real action is local. It's amazing what state and county legislators are getting away with while everyone is hung up on the national political shit-show. If I were running for a county or state position, I'd be overjoyed that people are obsessed with the Trump/Biden farce....
I very much agree here. Much of what we deal with in our own lives comes out of the state capital or city hall. We're not going to get answers from Washington on, say, crime or homelessness (and we shouldn't look to DC for that type of stuff either)
As others are pointing out, Congress is no longer where the action is. Congress has not functioned in its proper role for decades. The country is run by the unelected bureaucrats of the administrative state, in coordination with the expert class in their perches at the media, big tech, education, grant/grift-sucking "companies", etc, etc.
A Republican president can slightly pare some of the excesses of the administrative state back for a few years, but nothing more (the "non-partisan civil servants" will make damn sure the impact is limited). But a Democratic president can go full bore with abuses of executive power (yes the courts will slap some of it back, but that takes years, and meanwhile the Overton window continues to expand), and the denizens of the administrative state will slam into overdrive putting it all into action.
So the election does make a difference, just not in the actual rule of law way the Founders intended. (To be clear I think there is no positive outcome to be had coming up.)
The big national issues are not decided by bureaucrats, but by presidents wielding executive orders, or by the Supreme Court.
They only get to the Supreme Court in the first place by abuses of executive power and/or poor legislation by Congress in the past. And I don't mean just "big national issues" - I mean the general running of the country. The agencies engage in "rulemaking" (effectively lawmaking) all the time (not only do they act in lieu of the self-emasculated legislative branch, they often even have their own internal "courts" to act as their own judicial branch, deciding on the fate of companies under the "laws" they themselves "wrote"). This is all based on 100 years of progressive-left ratcheting under decades of Dem majorities in Congress and a Supreme Court that sang their tune.
My hope is that the current Court eventually pushes this all back into line, but there's a long way to go with 100 years of precedent on the other side. Just tearing out Chevron, for example (ironically a decision hailed by the right at first), would be a baby step.
No, tearing up Chrevron would hamstring too much. What we really did is not some court rulings (that's just more rule bu unelected elite) but a Congress that does the job we elect and pay it for. If bureaucrats are overstepping their delegated authority, then it is Congress' job toi slap that down. Anything else just risks cures worse than the disease.
You are a little naive on this.
Legislation is almost impossible in a culture in which niche media preach to their choirs, thus creating a public discourse with zero shared information. Right?
To the Question you posed: February of 1969, Filmore West, The Grateful Dead. I came home to My People.
Correction: Early February of 1970
Trump is a media guy. Swift is a media figure/creation. There has already been discussion/rumors how she will be used by the Biden campaign. No idea if there is an "organized" effort among the Trump faithful, but given there is seemingly organized efforts among the Dems and Swift, well...
It is the actions of media and celebs, and talking about it even this much has already bored me.
Maybe the fix is in for the Chiefs.
I think you are right. The game is being choreographed even as we type. Travis Kelce will catch a thirty yard touchdown on the last play of the game and Taylor Swift and Kelce will embrace at the fifty yard line as the confetti flutters from the skies.
Oh, please - both teams have won multiple Superbowls. And if it weren't for the flaming romance between Swift and Kelce, I'd expect the uproar to be about the San Francisco 49ers, because "San Francisco" - GASP! They'll be out there in drag!
You must admit that if there was an engagement, a traditional marriage, and pregnancy, within the next say 14 months, it would do wonders for young white girls going forward....LOL!
I'm rooting for their romance. I honestly don't care who wins the Super Bowl.
I'm completely uninterested in Taylor Swift, but when I see photos of her with Kelcie, I see what appears to be a very sincere smile on the face of a young woman whose job requires her to fake-smile a lot. I'm wary of being jerked around by PR campaigns, but it seems real to me.
Even with no pregnancy it would be a wholesome influence-- instead of the two just moving in with together.
Swift has had some songs about bad romances. "We are never ever getting back together" is a classic f***-you break up song. "I Knew You Were Trouble" is about the mistake of going after a "bad boy".
Re: They'll be out there in drag!
I cannot unsee the picture this conjured in my mind.
A beautiful sentiment. I can just see many in the homosexual community fantasizing over Christian McCaffrey of the Niners.
The 49ers do have the only male NFL cheerleader....Jonathan. Google tells me he's "out" in case I was wondering!
See my reply below to Derek.
I do think Taylor Swift is self-created. She has always been very savvy about her image and with how to connect to her fan base using media. If I remember correctly, I read in a “New Yorker” article from about 9 or 10 years ago that she was mining Twitter hashtags at her concerts, prior to going up on stage, and selecting tweets from her fans in the audience to broadcast over the Jumbotron, sending the girls into paroxysms of squeals and screams. She’s been a good songwriter since her teens.
I’m not a fan. And other than the song “Mean,” along with its accompanying video— which I think is brilliant—I really don’t care for any of her music. Yes, at this moment, she’s overhyped, and I’ll attribute the overhype to the media and the arrested adolescence of the females who make up the rank and file of media. But she’s the farthest thing from being an empty suit, dress, leotard, or what have you.
I decided to give one of her albums a listen on my morning walk just now. A song called "Exile" got my attention—but that was a duet with Bon Iver, who I think is great.
You may like her song "Renegade" with the National.
Good call! Huh, Big Red Machine? Wiki says that they're a collaboration between Justin Vernon (alias Bon Iver) and one of the guys from The National, so now I have their music to check out as well.
You'll like their stuff!
p.s. her two quarantine albums (folklore and evermore) were actually long distance collaborations with Aaron Dessner from the National. Both are very different from her pop anthems.
I’m not a fan either, don’t hate it (was exposed while my daughter was at the proper age a while back), but I do quite like Ryan Adams's entire album redo of her "1989". That made me think - when the music was performed in a different style I actually liked - that there was something there, at least with songwriting talent. Some of the songs, when redone by Adams, almost had an early Springsteen thing about them.
As a man approaching 70 I am not a Swift fan, but her songs are quite good as pop numbers and have seen stories about her doing a substantial amount of giving. I do not understand why her ticket prices are so high, though, many of her fans are not rich.
What instrument does she play?
Sings and dances, plays a little guitar.
I mostly listen to bluegrass these days, not a Swift fan but I to some extent understand her appeal. Works hard too and doesn't seem to be sleazy as some popular artists are.
Does she cover songs like "Get Off of My Cloud", "I Feel Fine" or "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"?
For great covers of that era by present day women you need Morgan James or Reina del Cid.
James is classy and tasteful. Reina del Cid and her stable remind me of friends I had at that age.
LOL. Nailed it!
As a 70 y.o. musician, I can attest that I've heard just one song from Taylor Shvitz- her very first hit, the one about the short shorts, where she sings, 'You belong to me- hee-hee.' Can't hold a note. That was enough for me.
I spent years playing in country (among other) bands and as far as I'm concerned, country went into the ditch around 2000 with the the rise of people like Eileen (Shania) Twain , too much Garth channeling Styx, and the record companies ditching their mid-to-lower profitable artists (eg Pam Tillis.)
Everything got formularized and lyrics became (to me) a question of how many words can you fit into three minutes.
And the singers (especially females) seemingly started to compete with Celine Dion to see whose voice has more power.
To be sure, there are some really good country artists out there now- Kacey Musgraves, Jason Isbel, Lyle Lovett (hopefully still out there) , John Fullbright, etc. but you have to find them. I hope Vince Gill and Patty Loveless are still at it..,,,And the influence of 'rap' and hippity hop has been most destructive.
I like Bluegrass as well. One of my favorite CDs is the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Will the Circle be Unbroken."
I’m not sure how Swift is any different than any other Post WW2 pop culture phenomenon: Beatlemania, Elvis, 90s Boy Bands, etc. I like the parallels to Hooligan Firms to explain how people can get caught up in something that makes them feel good and empowered. I think the article makes a nice tie-in there.
I simply think the Trump camp is overplaying this card, like they overplay everything. As Rod says right away, if you’re going to vote based on a celebrity endorsement, you’ve probably already decided Trump isn’t your man. Move on, end of story. Yes, you have a billionaire pop star with followers who might not like Trump. Who cares? Most people in her class don’t. The Trump crowd does not seem to understand that half the country doesn’t like Trump. I’m likely going to vote for him to kick Joe out, but I’m not happy about it.
Swift is pretty inoffensive as far as pop divas go. By today’s standards her music is pretty clean, not at all violent, and kind of plastic. Perfect for the times in which we live.
I’m dreading the next 10 months. This is an absolutely unnecessary election. Everyone knows how they feel about the two men helming the tickets. I think we conservatives are going to have our head in our hands a lot, and I think it’s going to be gas on the dumpster fire of decline. Swift is the least of our problems.
Seeing as she's singing about Romeo while others are busy describing their genitalia, yes, agreed—she's not that bad at all.
You know Sam Kriss? Opener to his recent meditation:
“Taylor Swift is, by any sensible measure, the most famous person in the world. The actual leaders of actual countries beg her to visit their dying lands, put on a show, make their miserable people spend some of their miserable money, maybe nudge the whole economy just a few points out of recession. When a war breaks out in Asia, both sides immediately try to argue that they’re fighting on the side of Taylor Swift. She is bigger than Elvis, bigger than the Beatles, bigger than God. She has blasted herself on a jet of pure sugary Americana into every quiet crevice of global culture. She provides the texture of daily life for thirteen year old Indonesian girls with hijabs and hard scraping eyes. There are swathes of rebel bushland in central Africa where children tear the guts out the earth at gunpoint and the central government has no power at all—but Taylor Swift does. In my travels across China, the only Western music you’d ever hear playing anywhere belonged to Taylor Swift. She’s not a solitary human being; she’s Coca-Cola. She has fundamentally changed the inner workings of the record industry, show ticketing, intellectual property—why not? Let’s say music theory too. She invented tone. She invented pitch. Taylor Swift seems destined to be remembered by our drooling, mud-eating descendants as a kind of culture hero, the mythical source of everything left for them to inherit. First was she who plucked strings and made pleasant sounds. Who taught man to spin thread and mark the hours of the sun.”
Whole piece is typical Sam.
https://samkriss.substack.com/p/taylor-swift-does-not-exist
Ah, Sam Kriss is fun, and in my opinion a fantastic writer. I'll check that out.
An amazingly learned crackpot satirist. This piece wasn’t great, but has its moments.
Hey, speaking of crackpot satirists, I picked up your book. Haha. I looked at the preview, and my eyes fell upon the line, "The rhino is a natural gnostic."
Hope you’re getting some laughs from it. One friend, rather gnostic, finds the rhino piece his favorite.
Wow, that is quite the fever dream of a story: the paranoia makes me think of Pynchon, like in *The Crying of Lot 49*.
Hm, I wonder if Taylor Swift is some sort of Rorschach test? For my part, I just see a rather normal woman who writes a lot of decent songs and sometimes even a few really good ones, when she veers into folk and indie rock. I wonder what that says about my relative level of derangement. . . . .
I like his speculations on her navel. And the Aramaic bowl!
If someone asks whether Eve and Adam had belly buttons, I say yes; and if they ask why, I say, "For decoration." A ludicrious question deserves an answer in kind.
Well, you assume they need such decoration because your aesthetic sense is postlapsarian. Pre-Fall, the smooth look was Beauty itself.
A couple of months back, even Justsome Trudeau was pleading with her to visit Canada.
“Come on up! We can have a girl’s night, play dress up!”
Hilarious! I've got to check this guy out....
As a goof my wife gave my daughter as a stocking stuffer the new Taylor Swift Little Golden Book:
https://images.app.goo.gl/NPBS28bizHEvSCNH6
WE had peace with Trump… he has the talent of international relations, its called diplomacy. We had a thriving economy and low UE. We had grumblers, but as always they silently participated in the benefits while other side of mouth engaged in cut.throat. People can be better!
Re: he has the talent of international relations, its called diplomacy.
Yes, assassinating an Iranian general by drone, and getting all bosom buddy with one of the world's most noxious tyrants is the epitome of diplomacy.
Actually, I think he did a pretty good job handling Kim, who is now making more noises than before. And he had the madman's gambit working in his favor: people didn't wanna mess around too much because they didn't know what he might do—and it was persuasive, since he also did not know.
My late father had a saying: 'Some people can't cope with prosperity.'
It's interesting you bring up the Beatles. As somebody with kids who came of age in the zeros I can say with confidence TayTay's succession of hits has been like NOTHING since the Lennon and McCartney 1964-1970. And they quit!
Have you ever seen the four Beatles shows on the old Ed Sullivan Show? The girls in the audience are insane. The boys just watched glumly.
I saw them on the hoof, D. That's how old I am.
On the roof? (Yesterday was the 55th anniversary of their last public performance - not that I'm paying attention or anything! *L*)
' . . . on the hoof'.
I think that he means he saw them in-person live somewhere (not necessarily the roof-top concert.)
I don't think the boys were glum to see the Beatles; it's just that they came to see a concert and it was drowned out by the girls' screams.
They unearthed a recording of a concert the Beatles gave at a private boarding school in Liverpool just as they were really hitting the big time. The recording was awful, but you could actually hear the band because it was an all-boys school. With improvements in technology, the "mix" can finally be corrected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYaMkVmlg3A
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65167799
No, they were glum. The boys knew that their girlfriends would dump them in a second to be with John, Paul, George or Ringo.
True, but I think the same could be said a few years earlier when boys knew their girlfriends would gladly dump them for Elvis or Ricky Nelson.
I think the only period in which girls wouldn't dump their boyfriends for some pop musicians would be in the '70s. I can't really visualize girls dumping their guys to be with Frank Zappa, Donald Fagen (Steely Dan), Simon & Bullwinkle, or Iggy Pop.