The last time James Carville was relevant, Crystal Pepsi was on the shelves, Ice-T's "Cop Killer" was on the radio and Nirvana was in the studio recording Nevermind. Magic the Gathering did not exist, nor did Pokemon, and Eternal September was a year in the future. My wife was filling out a census last night from her birth center association. They asked about our minority representation. We were supposed to list how many African Americans we employed, how many Mexicans, and how many Puerto Ricans. That's it. I told her to write them back telling them we weren't going to answer their bullshit questions until they stopped trying to erase our Brazilian-Japanese midwife, our Welsh-Taiwanese receptionist, our half-Hawaiian naturopath, our Italian-Chinese naturopath or and our Cuban-American office assistant and ask them how, exactly, in a country where the President is decrying violence on Asian-Americans on national television, they felt those three categories were somehow inclusive. Know what sucks about getting old? The grocery stores start playing songs you haven't heard since your childhood. That's right, old man, the Muzak is for you. 'cuz you remember what bullshit it was that you couldn't buy a fuckin' candybar without hearing the Shondells or Herman's Hermits or Frankie Fucking Valli none of whom had contributed the slightest bit to culture since before you were born and there's Thomas Dolby, being Blinded with Science. But you know what? That means you don't have to listen to Frankie Fucking Valli anymore, and neither does anyone else, because to a person born in 2004, "Pennsylvania 6-5000" was probably sung into a victrola by assholes wearing porkpie hats. You know who uses the phrase "communities of color?" ANYONE INTERACTING WITH A PUBLIC UNDER 30. Know how to find someone who uses the word "LatinX?" ASK. I overheard my kid's teacher explaining to the class how important it is to pronounce someone else's name correctly because it's their name and it matters a lot more to them than it does to you. That's the big swap that conceited, sociopathic senior citizens like James Carville don't get: they don't get to pick anymore. They are culturally irrelevant. The world has moved on, their arc is done, it's time to diminish and fade into the fucking East because their cultural moment is over and anyone fighting that? In the name of defending the old hidebound barriers that got us here? Needs to fuck right off.
Carville might be a grumpy old man, but he might also be right about winning elections in 2022, which is what he was getting at. He was talking shop and explaining why a racist buffoon did so well. On the flipside of ample identity options, my friend is a prof at a large public university. He recently shared an email his department sent him regarding pronouns he might select for their website: ae/aet/aers e/em/eirs fae/faer/faers he/him/his per/per/pers she/her/hers they/them/theirs ve/ver/vis xe/xem/xyrs ze/hir/hirs He found it hilarious that these very intelligent people tried to compile an exhaustive pronoun list. This was not a university-wide effort, just departmental. What % of the department is xe/xem/xrys, and is it greater than the % that would be offended not to find their pronoun on this list? He did not believe this awkward effort was sincere, and I can understand his point. This friend is very progressive, a reliable Democratic voter, and he spans millenial/GenX. I can sympathize with both the need to destroy the patriarchy and racism, and with the need to win elections that help do it. Also, in general, old people are always going to be out-of-step. The Overton Window leaves us all.And beyond that, if Democrats want power, they have to win in a country where 18 percent of the population controls 52 percent of the Senate seats. That’s a fact. That’s not changing. That’s what this whole damn thing is about.
Here's the list of options:
Nope. Nope to all of that. The Left pays more for AOC than the Right pays for Marjorie Taylor Greene because three generations of punditry have embraced neoliberalism so hard that the Right can openly embrace naziism. Overton Window? That's alll Carville, cynically proclaiming that left, right, doesn't fuckin' matter, it's all polo anyway no matter how many Willie Hortons you throw into the mix. And here he is again, implying that if you don't inconvenience the fee-fees of 80-year-old Nazis by making them learn new pronouns, they'll somehow vote Democratic. Carville and his ilk pander to fuckin' old people because they're fuckin' old people with a fuckin' old mentality whose friends are fuckin' old who run fuckin' old businesses and then decry the youth who are disengaged from the process because they somehow think their concerns aren't being addressed and their voices aren't being listened to. And allow me to say - with no quaver in my voice - that I was annoyed by pronouns YEARS before you'n'yours and I'm here to say that if wading through ten options on a dropdown in census software brings the tiniest bit of existential joy to the two people who identify as "xe", fucking do it. Because anyone who has chosen to fight the "I go by xem" battle could use some. There's this long-held belief among Carville's generation that if we just stand in Mountain Pose long enough, the guys who left the Democratic Party when LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act might just come back. And they need to fuck off with that shit.