Gen X

Will Republican Misogyny Drive White Women to Harris and Can Taylor Swift Help?

~ Randy Blazak ~ Leave a comment

July 23, 2024

One of the most depressing things about the 2020 election was seeing more white women move into the Trump voting pool. While only 47 percent of white women voted Republican in 2016, 53 percent voted for the GOP in 2020, according to Pew Research. While women of color largely remained Democratic voters, the “soccer moms” seemed to be falling for Trump. Those Republican women were rewarded in June 2022 when the Supreme Court took away their reproductive rights in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. Dobbs woke many of those Republican women up. That fall, conservative women in redder than red Kansas voted, en masse, against a proposed state abortion ban. Was the sleeping giant waking?

Dissertations are being written on why so many white women support a convicted felon, who brags about wanting to date his daughter and grabbing women by the genitals. “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said. A man who was found, by a jury of his peers, liable for sexual assault, in a case the judge equated with rape. Why would white women support this pig? What woman would tell their daughter that, “This is a good man and should be our president”? My theory is that their racism trumps his sexism. They see themselves as white first and women second.

Now, of all possible running mates, Trump has picked first term Ohio senator J.D. Vance to be his wingman. While it’s not surprising Trump picked a white male MAGA loyalist (who won’t stray like that Constitution-abiding Mike Pence), it is a little surprising that Trump would pick someone as anti-woman as Vance. Vance opposes no-fault divorce and wants a national ban on all abortion, even if a girl is raped by her father. (As J.D. says, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”) You’d think forced government birth for rape victims would not be a good look for the G.O.P., who should be trying to lure female voters back after Dobbs. But there is no G.O.P. anymore. There is only Trump, a party of one. In high school, I learned this was called “fascism.”

So the Trump-Vance ticket is the most misogynistic ticket of this century. And, suddenly, they are up against, not Old Man Biden, but Vice President Kamala Harris, who has also been a successful senator, state attorney general, and prosecutor of the same crimes for which Trump has been convicted. Sunday, after Biden’s announcement, I dove into right wing social media and charted the avalanche of racism and sexism that was being unleashed by the white men of MAGA. Then I took the shower.

Accusations that Harris is “incompetent,” “slept her way to the top,” and is a “DEI hire,” should be familiar to every single woman who has tried to find equity in the workplace. This includes Republican women – the ones in the workplace, not the ones homeschooling their kids. That women have to work twice as hard and get half as much is a lived reality known to all working women (and people of color). These are the women that belt out the line from the Taylor Swift song, “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.” But the fact that this avalanche of “women are not qualified” misogyny is coming from the supporters of Trump-Vance may work in Harris favor.

Kathleen Blee’s pioneering 2008 book, Women of the Klan, found that women joined racist hate groups with their racist men, not on their own, and were challenged by the sexism that went hand in hand with the racism. Trump women who fawned over Trump at the RNC, with fake bandages on their right ears, may start to fall away when they hear the uncheck anti-woman rhetoric coming from their men, especially when they start to understand Harris has their back.

I’ve already witnessed this. Don’t tell anyone, but I belong to a Gen X Swiftie Facebook page. (Not all Taylor Swift fans are 9-year-old girls, like my daughter.) Swift is a strong feminist and has come out as a Democratic supporter. The 2020 documentary Miss Americana tells the powerful story of her political coming out. Taylor’s epic break-up song, “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” which is an updating of Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue,” contains the line, “And you were tossing me the the car keys, ‘Fuck the Patriarchy’ keychain on the ground.” Of course, being a feminist Swiftie over fifty, I went straight to Amazon and bought a “Fuck the Patriarchy” key chain.

After the Republican convention last week, which was the pinnacle of patriarchal bullshit, I posted a picture of my keychain on Gen X Swifties, with the tag, “Current mood.” I got hundreds of likes but some anger from a few Swifties that felt I had introduced politics into their “safe space.”

Then something amazing happened.

The other women on Gen X Swifties started a conversation with the “no politics” women. Not a “You’re stupid!” shouting match but a calm conversation that clearly stated, Taylor is political and so being a Taylor Swift fan is political. That Taylor has strongly come out for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights and against politicians who oppose those civil rights and you can’t separate these things. To be for Taylor is to be for women’s and queer rights and the taking of a strong stance against those that would suppress those rights is in line with Swift’s values of equality. People began posting memes of friendship bracelets that said, “In our Kamala era,” and repurposing Swift lyrics, like, “Kamala’s a relaxing thought.” And those “no politics” women didn’t bail. They stayed and listened.

I’d like to make a prediction. Swift’s Eras tour returns to the United States in October. As boyfriend Travis Kelce joined her onstage in London, there will be night when the vice president takes the stage. Preferably it will be during “You Need to Calm Down,” Swift’s brilliant anti-homophobia anthem, and Harris will do her famous Kamala dance. Swift will wink and that will be that. No words will be said and the massive Swift voting block will be activated.

So let Trump-Vance and their MAGA droogs unleash their pathetic misogynistic attacks. It’s like water off of Kamala’s back. She’s heard it all before. It can only work to peel those coveted white women, formerly known as soccer moms, away from the Trump cesspool and into the Harris camp. They may tell their men that they are voting for Trump, but in the privacy of the voting booth they’ll pull the lever for the prosecutor, not the felon. And when Taylor Swift sings, “Screaming, crying, perfect storms, I can make the tables turn. Rose garden full of thorns, keep you second guessing, like ‘Oh, my God, who is she?” They can sing along and say, “Yeah, that was me.”

Make America Classic Rock Again? The Political Danger of Nostalgia

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

March 5, 2024

I had a dream I turned on the classic rock radio station and heard a song I never heard before. I woke up thinking how boring nostalgia was. As much as I love a good Steve Miller Band single from 50 years ago, there has to be something more to life. Thanks to my 9-year old Swiftie daughter, the car radio is now locked into the Top 40 station. Z100! I know Steve Miller and his Jet Airliner are still there, but we’re in a droptop ride with SZA today.

I’ve now entered the age where I’m surrounded by peers, Baby Boomers and increasingly crotchety Gen Xers, complaining about “kids today” and how much better things were back in the day, music and values and the price of gas. It’s endlessly annoying. Just because Van Halen made “totally awesome” music in 1980, doesn’t mean there aren’t a ton of bands making great music now. (I’m writing this as I’m playing the new Bleachers record.) But I’m regularly being beaten over the head by Grumpy Old Men who don’t think any music released this century is worth a damn. They desperately want the world be like it was when they were young and you could ride in the back of a pick-up truck to the drive-in.

Let’s first deal with three important facts.

FACT 1: I love when I read old timers complain that youth today have no morals or respect or blah, blah, blah. They forget that their parents’ generation said the same thing about them. Kids have never had any goddamn respect. Socrates, over 2400 years ago said much the same thing. “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” They might be assholes half the time, but the kids are alright. 

FACT 2: Rock and roll was created in the 1950s for one specific reason, to annoy your parents. The noise of youth creates space for young people separate themselves from adult society. Adults thought Elvis was noise in the 1950s, with his gyrating hips and “negro intonations.” Every year kids have had something to push their parents back, including Hendrix (1960s), Kiss (1970s), Run DMC (1980s), Nirvana (1990s), Eminem (2000s), Beyoncé (2010s), and Doja Cat (now). I remember my father endlessly perplexed at why I preferred Led Zeppelin to Ricky Nelson. “That’s not music,” was the constant refrain. “I hope I die before I get old,” I’d reply. I remember elders thinking Van Halen was absolute garbage when they came out. (I saw them get booed when they opened for Black Sabbath in 1978.) Now grandma and grandpa are in a heated Sammy Hagar versus David Lee Roth debate.

FACT 3: The past always looks great through the rear view mirror, but the past was always a mixed bag. Yeah, it was fun to ride around in the back of a pick-up truck, but a bunch of kids fell out and died. Yeah, there were some great songs back then but there were some super shitty ones, too. Does anyone really miss “Disco Duck”? Yeah, it was fun to play in the streets with your pals, but often you were playing “Smear the Queer.” Whenever someone waxes on and on about the dreamlike good old days, I flash to me holding the TV antenna in just the right position so I could watch the Watergate hearings on one of the three channels we got, while also trying to manage the horizontal hold. I’ll take my Roku, thank you.

Nostalgia was originally defined as a sickness in the 1680s to describe Swiss mercenaries who couldn’t fight because the longed for home. During the American Civil War, nostalgia was seen as a problematic form a depression, melancholia to be cured so the soldiers could wage war. It’s root as a mental disability is not lost on the lives of those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, endlessly caught in loops of their past, unable to engage in the present world in a meaningful way. “If I could just go back to when I was happy.” Odds are you weren’t as happy as you imagine.

There’s a dangerous political aspect to all this hyper-nostalgia, this over romanticizing of the past. It’s the impetus behind all forms of fascism, from Hitler’s mythologizing of Germany’s past or Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. For Trump’s crowd it’s the belief that America was great BEFORE all the various civil rights movements upset the “natural” authority of straight white cis-gender men. The America before pronouns, diversity trainings, and black lives mattering. Make America Jim Crow Again. It’s not surprising that Trump has leaned heavily on 20th century music artists to take his MAGA crowd back to the GOD (Good Old Days). It’s encouraging that dozens of these artists (or their estates) have petitioned Trump to stop using their music, including Aerosmith, The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Eddy Grant, Elton John, the Village People (!), Everlast, Guns N Roses, Isaac Hayes, The Smiths, Leonard Cohen, Linkin Park, Neil Young, Ozzy Osbourne, Phil Collins, Prince, Queen, R.E.M., The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, and even Nickelback. Just this week, the estate of Sinead O’Connor asked Trump to stop using her version of “Nothing Compares to You.” Fascism requires nostalgia but they are not doing it with Nickelback!

Two Important Points

Number 1: I get nostalgia. When we are young, and the world is in front us, every new experience is massively vibrant, the first kiss, the first time listening to Dark Side of the Moon. Those experiences and their soundtrack are woven into our very construction, like the iron beams that hold up the Empire State Building. Sitting in a smoke field movie theater watching The Empire Strike Back or falling to sleep to Steely Dan on the FM headphones has been fused into our DNA. As we age, and more of our life is behind us instead of in front of us, we start to lean on those iron beams. The Empire State Building, built 93 years ago, might not be here 93 years from now (2117), but it will always remind us of a specific moment in history that was both “great” and horrible.

I can get caught up in nostalgia, just like everyone else. I currently have 955 public playlists on Spotify, most mining the music of my youth. (Playlist #956 is going to be songs from albums released in March 1974, starting with Grand Funk’s “Locomotion.”) If I have any actual hobbies, it’s collecting vinyl LPs and anything related to the Beatles. And I would trade my eye teeth to get behind the wheel of my first car, a ’73 Gran Torino, again. But that brings me to Point #2.

Number 2: Nostalgia can block out our ability to be present in the present. We’re so focused on the past and making America “that” again, we miss out on the wonderful stuff right in front of us. I will never stop listening to Top 40 radio and looking for new bands to obsess over. (Currently, it’s Blood Command.) I love sharing my daughter’s love of all things Taylor Swift and discovering this music with her (Lover is our current favorite album, although I’m starting to get into folklore.) Listening to contemporary music connects me to the present moment, not when America Was Ricky Nelson. Even if for a moment, it liberates me from the endless nostalgia loop. And it’s inevitable that Taylor Swift will be on “oldies” rotation in 30 years and my kid will say, “When I was a kid, we had REAL music, like Dua Lipa. These kids today…” And so it goes.

So enjoy the past. There’s great wisdom in a Crosby, Stills, and Nash lyric and a Jimmy Carter foreign policy. Huey Lewis and Ronald Reagan don’t seem as horrid as they did 40 years ago. And some of our fond memories are shockingly marginalizing now. (If you can’t remember how racist, sexist, and homophobic we were, just watch any 80’s comedy film. Weird Science has not aged well.) But also plug into the present reality. The kids today have both the exact same issues we contended with and so much more. And their world is reflected in their culture, which should not be dismissed as our parents dismissed ours. Their soundtrack is worth a listen.

On Turning 60 in an Ageist Culture

~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

February 19, 2024

Life is timeless, days are long when you’re young

You used to fall in love with everyone

Any guitar and any bass drum

Life is a drink and you get drunk when you’re young

– “When You’re Young” by The Jam (1978)

Here’s what I remember about being 29 years old. Being in a panic for 12 months, that the youth culture, that I had pledged allegiance to, was about to kick me off the boat. I sat in an Atlanta cafe (Café Diem) and kept a journal chronicling my desperate attempt to stranglehold youth before I was put into the “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30” lane. The morning of my 30th birthday I woke up, wrung out in New Orleans, and realized I was the exact same person as the was the day before.

For most of our time on earth human beings have been clueless at the concept of birthdays and even their own age. Joan of Arc could only guess that she was 19 when she was put on trial for heresy in 1431. Cave people didn’t say, “Well, I’m a Virgo, that’s why this cave is so damn clean.” Birthdays are a modern invention and we put a lot of significance on them as meaningful moments of transition. But was 37 really that different from 36?

I say this because tomorrow I turn 60, which is either massively monumental or completely meaningless. I can’t decide. Sixty sounds really old. Or it sounded really old when I was 20, forty years ago. In 1984. During the Reagan administration. Before the internet. When you had to remember people’s phone numbers. To my students, all born in the 21st Century, I must be Methuselah. But I don’t feel old at all, just wise. Like Methuselah.

We live in an incredibly ageist society that has long devalued people who are above the mean age. Look at how Joe Biden, 81, is being aged out of competency. Biden is the same age as Mick Jagger (and only 3 years older than Trump, who, under that badly dyed mop on his head, is just another grandfather) and has done a pretty good job of pulling the country out of the ditch Trump drove it into. Age was once associated with invaluable experience and now it’s a measure of how good you are not at updating apps. Maybe Biden needs a Trump wig and spray tan.

I dread having to check boxes on questionnaires that say “Age: 60+,” but I’m pretty much the same guy I’ve always been. I love new music when it’s loud. I despise nostalgia and I’m still making sure I my exercise outweighs my excess. Maybe I lucked out holding on to my hair, unlike my dad. Will I be disregarded now that I’m 60? As a Gen X elder, I’ve got waves of Millennials and Gen Y whippersnappers to tell me how disconnected I am. My old stories don’t carry the same clout in the TikTok era. Nobody cares that I hung out with Bono. Have you seen Bono’s face lately? (Someone should tell the Irish about SPF.)  But as even craggier Ron Wood sang, “We all get old.” (Footnote: Ron Wood is in the Rolling Stones with Mick Jagger who Kesha sang about. Ask your mom about Kesha.)  Where do I fit in the AARP world where nobody retires and where this 60-something will be buying the new Taylor Swift album the day it comes out?

The difference between now and then (cue Beatles song), is the life lessons we are lucky to collect along the way. I have no way of really remembering my life at 20. It’s filtered through all the experiences in the 40 years that connect those two points in time. I can’t remember what it was like to hear the Replacements in 1984 because I think about it in relation to the 40 years of other things I’ve heard since my friend Tim put their Let It Be album on his turntable. All those moments of youth are similarly filtered. But I do know I’ve learned some things (and forgotten more).

So if Randall at 60 was to zip back to Randy at 20 and give him three nuggets, this is what I’d share with him.

First would be to be a sponge. To stop and soak up the moment. We are super shitty at being “present” in this life, always looking ahead. So I would tell him to try this exercise I created. I call it “5 Senses 5 Moments,” and it goes like this:

Stop and take a moment to be in the moment by doing these 5 things. 1. Close your eyes and listen to the sounds of the space you are in. What’s the ambient background noise? Can you hear others breathing? 2. Look around you and let your eyes settle on one thing. It could be the complex pattern of a brick or the way a plant sways in the breeze or the hair of the person next to you. 3. Open your mouth and take a gulp of air. What do you taste? This morning’s coffee? 4. Smell the air of the space you are in. What do you notice and where is it coming from? 5. Lastly, find a surface around you to touch and notice. It could be the texture of your pants or the warmth of your forearm. How does the air feel on your skin? (I’d like to thank Yoko Ono, whose 91st birthday was yesterday, for helping my brain to work this way.)

I wish I had taken more moments in my life to stop and smell the roses. It was moving so fast and I missed a lot. Now I stop. There is beauty in the present moment.

The second thing would be to remind Young Randy is that he lives in the world with other people, they are not just passing through his world, in Randyland. American youth culture fosters narcissism. It was all about me and the performance of coolness. I read Walt Whitman in the early 80’s as a license to celebrate myself at the expense anyone I was close to.  But I only exist in tandem with others so I should have been more curious about their lives. I thought I was in a movie starring me, but I was also bit player in their stories.

And the third thing would be to stay away from credit cards. Pay in cash. Much worse than being broke is being in debt.

When I think of how I spent my time 40 years ago, much of it was rooftops, or on my Vespa racing to the top of parking decks, with a girl on the back, to take in the steaming skyline of the city. I spent so much energy trying to find the nooks and crannies in their world to inhabit. An abandoned warehouse that was a brief punk rock refuge or a back alley that we could spray paint our hopes and dreams on. Now my energy goes to transform my own spaces, including the world my child will inherit. I’m not afraid of 60. I now have the resources to help create the reality I wanted to see when I was young.

Yeah, at 60 there is more behind you than ahead of you, but there is still plenty ahead. I’m excited to see what’s next.