Substacks
Can a Jew Still Love Kanye? Suzy Weiss
Kanye West’s new album, Vultures 1, isn’t exactly a triumph. But a B-minus Kanye is most artists’ A-plus, according to Eli Lake, who reviews the rapper turned antisemite’s latest offering in The Free Press today.
Eli was an early fan of Kanye—“He defied hip-hop’s division of labor and proved that with enough chutzpah, the producer could become the star.” But Kanye’s recent Jew-hating antics—he’s praised Hitler, thinks the Rothschilds are after him, that blacks are the real Jews, and—you get the picture—has tested the old edict that we ought to separate art from the artist.
And yet, Eli concludes, Ye is an “antisemitic edgelord, but he remains a musical genius.” Read his full essay here:
That cute guy at the bar is reading a book. Wait, is he actually reading that collection of Joan Didion essays—or just posing with it?
“Books have always led this sort of double life: as vehicles for story on one side, and on the other, as props in a performance,” writes Kat Rosenfield in The Free Press today. “With books—as with so many things—who we are and what we want lives in tension with how we wish to be seen.”
Taking a page from Marilyn Monroe and the iconic 1955 shoot of her reading James Joyce’s epic Ulysses, today’s hottest model (Kaia Gerber) is building a literary empire. Meanwhile, wannabe “hot guys” are scavenging for the best “status books” and a gazillion online amateur reviewers are leveraging books as fodder to fuel a whole new chapter of the culture war.
It all raises the question: Are any of these people actually reading any books?
Read Kat Rosenfield’s story on the new divide between “readers” and readers:
Back to the music. Just as Taylor Swift has completed her transition from country music to the Queen of Pop, Beyoncé has done the same in reverse. Evan Gardner, The Free Press’s resident country expert, fills us in on Queen Bey’s latest move:
Two weeks ago, in the middle of the Super Bowl, Beyoncé, shilling for Verizon, attempted to “break the internet” by dropping new music. Instead, she broke a new record. One of her two new songs, “Texas Hold ’Em,” went to number one on the Billboard country chart, making her the first black woman ever to capture that spot. Her other new song, “16 Carriages,” debuted at number nine. The songs are a preview for her upcoming country album Renaissance Act II (a sequel to 2022’s Renaissance), leaving the music world—from R&B executives to country stars—scratching their heads and asking: Is Beyoncé really country?
It’s a good question, and one best answered by her past work. On her 2016 album Lemonade, for example, Beyoncé dipped into eight different genres in just 12 tracks, covering everything from hip-hop to reggae to dance music and yes, country. And “Texas Hold ’Em” has all the telltale characteristics of a country song: there’s hollering, call and response, pining banjo strings, and a pun in the title.
Beyoncé herself is a constellation: she comes from both Louisiana Creole (her mom) and Texas stock (her dad), and her sounds are often reflections of her heritage. While country may be one coordinate, there’s also her dancy 2022 album Renaissance, a trip into the gay club scene as homage to her Uncle Johnny (whom she lost to the AIDS epidemic). Perhaps the best way to hear her music is like a good old-fashioned Texas cookout: she’s pulling contributions from each parent onto her plate, and topping it off with the “hot sauce in her bag” for a signature Beyoncé Knowles-Carter kick.
Country’s biggest stars have done exactly the same: just look at Johnny Cash, the iconic crooner who grew up the son of a sharecropper in south central Arkansas and carried scars from picking cotton all over his guitar-picking hands; or Elvis, who grew up singing gospel in a black church; or the soulful black pianist Ray Charles, who once released a country album that prompted him to say: “You take country music, you take black music, and you got the same goddamn thing exactly.”
Of course she’s no Hank Williams or Merle Haggard, but Beyoncé’s latest adventure is even more proof that cultural mixing is in right now—and if you look at the history of American music, it never went away.
It seems we are in the love business. After launching The Free Press Lonely Hearts Club just a week ago, one reader and a suitor have reportedly really hit it off. Love is in the air, folks!
Today, we present you with messages from three more lonely hearts.
Alex Spies, 26, Rapid City, South Dakota
My friends and the old church ladies refer to me as a “hot commodity,” saying that some lady oughta snatch me up. I was reasonably confident this would’ve happened in my life by now. But I’ve made two big mistakes: going to a small engineering school and working at a military base. These two factors have shrunk my dating pool to near-zero.
Now there’s much more to me than the dorky engineer I often am:
Discussing old books with friends
Volunteering to sling beer at community night events
Being the “friend with a truck”
Picking up outdoor hobbies to play in the hills
Going to various board meetings for whatever I’m volunteered for
Proof of my character growth is me recently discovering “light beers” are actually good and that I will finally give The Lord of the Rings a chance by reading the books instead of calling them “movies that I fell asleep to as a kid.”
Think of me as your typical midwest Lutheran guy looking for a classical conservative lady who wants to abscond from this crazy dating scene with me.
(Dear Editor, if I get a response from a girl in her 20s who seems like she could be friends with my grandmother, I’ll finally subscribe to the paid version.)
Isabella Pria, 29, New York City
My name is Isabella, and I’m a 29-year-old architect working in NYC. I’m from Venezuela but I’ve lived in the U.S. for over 10 years.
In my culture, Valentine’s Day is also known as the “Day of Love and Friendship,” so I figured I’d give it a shot at finding the latter. I just need a friend.
Friendships have proved increasingly difficult to find as I grow older and more selective. Besides, I’m already married.
I have a super green thumb, I am a regular nightlife/techno enjoyer, and I like alternative aesthetics. Just your regular Brooklyn girl, except that I have the wrong politics and enjoy reading about internet drama and culture wars from the other side of the aisle.
I’m not a conservative, but in the Brooklyn ecosystem, I am the odd one out. I often keep my opinions to myself, hiding my true self from potential friends. In a habitat like this, how can we find each other in the wild?
In that spirit, I am turning to TFP to find a friend that likes reading heterodox thinkers, but also likes to leave their house with a fire outfit and be social. Someone that allows me to transform my online lurking into real-life connection, and most importantly, that I can send memes to. Lord, so many good memes have passed me by.
I think this quest was inspired in part by listening to Suzy Weiss on the podcast Blocked and Reported, which gave me hope that there are people in this city that I would indeed want to be friends with. Shout-out to Suzy.
So here’s hoping that someone else is looking for the same thing. Please don’t make me go to Dimes Square to solicit strangers on the street. If you’d like to connect, email me. Did I mention I have an Italian husband who will make you pasta if the vibes are right?
Riley O’Neill, 24, Minneapolis, Minnesota
I’m just a Gomez looking for a Morticia. I love disco dancing & meringue, spicy food, antique shopping, gardening (especially winter hardy cactus, bonsai, and rare plants), designer clothing, wheel-throwing pottery, restoring 1800s furniture (notably my Chinese canopy bed), tamales, traveling, and meaningless debates late at night.
I’m 6’5 with glasses and spiky brown hair on a good day. I’m a PhD student studying machine learning and computer vision. I’m proficient in Chinese, can survive with Japanese, and can negotiate at flea markets in Italian. I don’t like breweries, gyms, or Taylor Swift’s music—conformity is the most distasteful sin of all; it’s better to be crazy than boring. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of French disco and Queens of the Stone Age. I’m looking for romance above all else—okay, maybe Bigfoot too.
I don’t change my mind very quickly. From my early adolescence onward, I fervently wanted to grow marijuana (legally). I impatiently waited years and years for Minnesota to legalize it. But now that it’s finally legalized, I have absolutely zero interest in growing it. It’s feasible to make far more per acre growing lavender, which also has far fewer regulations.
As Twain once wrote, “There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” Maybe that’s why I tend to fall in love with lesbians and married 20-somethings.
Should any of this appeal to you, please drop me a line. I’m reachable by carrier pigeon and smoke signal, but you’ll have the most success with email. At least steal my heart before you steal my identity.
If you’re interested in Alex, Isabella, or Riley, drop them a line. And if you want to submit your own lonely heart, find out more here.
Become a Free Press subscriber today:
Yesterday, U.S. officials arrested Ismael Zambada García, or “El Mayo,” cofounder of the violent and powerful drug trafficking organization the Sinaloa Cartel, and Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of its other cofounder. That other cofounder, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, or “El Chapo,” is already incarcerated in the U.S., as are another of El Chapo’s sons, alleged cartel leader Ovidio Guzmán López, and the cartel’s alleged lead hitman, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, or “El Nini.”
In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said: “Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable.” El Mayo has been charged with drug trafficking and money laundering.
U.S. officials exploited rifts in the cartel to get Guzmán López to bring El Mayo in. The successful and peaceful capture of the two Sinaloa Cartel leaders contrasts with Trump’s insistence that the U.S. must bomb or invade Mexico to damage the cartels, a position echoed by Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance and increasingly popular in the Republican Party. Mexico, which is America’s biggest trade partner, staunchly opposes such an intervention. Opponents note that such military action would do nothing to decrease demand for illegal drugs in the U.S. and would increase the numbers of asylum-seekers at the border as their land became a battleground.
Trump seems to think that governance is about dominance, but that approach often runs afoul of the law. Today the Justice Department reached a $2 million settlement with former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who became the butt of Trump’s attacks after their work on the FBI investigation into the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives. Trump’s Department of Justice released text messages between the two journalists. Today’s settlement appears to reflect that the release likely violated the Privacy Act, which bars the government from disclosing personal information.
Tonight, speaking to Christians at the Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump made his plans to become a strongman clear: “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians…. Get out, you’ve got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
This chilling statement comes after Trump praised autocratic Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán in his speech at the Republican National Convention last week and then publicly praised China’s president Xi Jinping for being “brilliant” because he “controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” It should also be read against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his “official duties.”
The Harris campaign reacted to Trump’s dark statements by ridiculing them, and him: “Tonight, Donald Trump couldn’t pronounce words [he mispronounced “landslide” as “land slade], insulted the faith of Jewish and Catholic Americans, lied about the election (again), lied about other stuff, bragged about repealing Roe, proposed cutting billions in education funding, announced he would appoint more extremist judges, revealed he planned to fill a second Trump term with more criminals like himself, attacked lawful voting, went on and on and on, and generally sounded like someone you wouldn’t want to sit near at a restaurant—let alone be President of the United States.
“America can do better than the bitter, bizarre, and backward looking delusions of criminal Donald Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris offers a vision for America’s future focused on freedom, opportunity, and security.”
Harris continually refers to Trump as a criminal in her speeches, but her campaign has taken the approach of referring to him and J.D. Vance as weirdos. On Tuesday, Minnesota governor Tim Walz said, “These guys are just weird.” Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Brian Schatz of Hawaii recorded a video together about Vance’s “super weird,” “bananas,” and “offensive” idea that people with children should be assigned additional votes for each child, making their wishes count more than people without children.
As J.D. Vance continues to step on rakes, the “weird” label seems correctly to label the MAGAs as outside the mainstream of American thought. Today, Vance doubled down on his denigration of women who have not given birth as “childless cat ladies” but assured voters he has nothing against cats. In addition, a video surfaced of Vance calling for the federal government to stop women in Republican-dominated states from crossing state lines to obtain abortions.
Mychael Schnell of The Hill reported today that while MAGA Republican lawmakers like Vance, a number of House Republicans are bashing his selection as the vice presidential candidate. “He was the worst choice of all the options,” one said. “It was so bad I didn’t even think it was possible.”
“The prevailing sentiment is if Trump loses, [it’s] because of this pick,” another said, a sentiment that suggests Vance will be a scapegoat if Trump loses. Considering what happened to Trump’s last vice president after Trump blamed him for an election loss, Vance might have reason to be concerned.
Last night’s “Answer the Call” Zoom has now raised more than $8.5 million for Harris; the organizers thanked Win With Black Women “for showing us how it’s done.” Today the Future Forward PAC, which had threatened to hold back $90 million in spending if Biden stayed at the head of the ticket, began large advertising purchases in swing states for Harris.
Carl Quintanilla of CNBC reported that a week ago, those on a phone call of more than 400 people from Bank of America’s Federal Government Relations Team believed that a Trump victory was a “foregone conclusion.” Now that conviction is gone. “[T]here’s been a palpable sentiment reversal.”
The Harris campaign announced that it will launch 2,600 more volunteers into its ground game in Florida, a state where abortion rights will be on the ballot this fall, likely turning out voters for the Democratic ticket. The volunteers will write postcards, make phone calls, and knock on doors.
Today, Vice President Kamala Harris filled out the paperwork officially declaring her candidacy for president of the United States.
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/us/sinaloa-cartel-ismael-zambada-custody-report/index.html
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/mexico-surpasses-china-us-biggest-trading-partner-exports/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/10/gop-bomb-mexico-fentanyl-00091132
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/26/peter-strzok-lawsuit-settlement-00171498
https://www.vox.com/culture/363230/jd-vance-couch-sex-hillbilly-elegy-rumor-false
https://thehill.com/homenews/4793818-vance-vp-trump-house-republicans/
https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Amendment_4,_Right_to_Abortion_Initiative_(2024)
X:
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Oh, no, it’s the sister again, for another slow news week. Let’s get to it.
→ Biden dropped out: Six years ago emotionally, but technically this past Sunday, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. He did it via X and promptly threw his support (and cash) behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Then he got Covid and hunkered down in Delaware—or depending on what hooch you’ve been drinking, died and was reanimated so he could appear before the cameras on Wednesday to address the nation. Joe’s family, including Hunter, sat along the wall of the Oval Office as he spoke. The president talked about the cancer moonshot, ending the war in Gaza, putting the party over himself, and Kamala’s tenacity, as Kamala’s pistol dug ever-so-slightly harder into his back. Right after, Jill, the First Lady of passive aggression, who apparently wanted to outdo her heart emoji, tweeted a handwritten note “to those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed.” I respect a First Lady who stands by her man and her energetic stepson. A First Lady who sees the high road way up there and says to herself, “If they want us out of here so bad, they can clean out the fridge and strip the beds themselves!”
→ Kamala is brat, Biden is boots, please God send the asteroid today: I’ve learned the hard way—and by that I mean my parents once asked me what “WAP” meant—that certain things should never be explained with words. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just that it embarrasses everyone.
That’s how I feel about the whole Kamala-is-brat thing. Brat is a good album about partying and getting older and having anxiety that was released earlier this summer by Charli XCX. But it’s since been adopted by too-online and very young people as a personality, and by Kamala Harris’s campaign as a mode to relate to those very young people. Her campaign is leaning into the whole green look of the album to try and win over Gen Z, and generally recasting her many viral moments—“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” “I love Venn diagrams” “What can be, unburdened but what has been”—as calling cards. It’s like when Hillary went on Broad City, only this time more cringe.
And now we have Jake Tapper and Greg Gutfeld grappling with the “essence” and the “aesthetic” and overall vibe of brat girl summer. We used to be a serious country. We used to make things.
Here’s the thing about Kamla: she is hilarious and campy, but unintentionally so. Any goodwill that her goofy dances or weird turns of phrase garner should be considered bonus points, not game play. Was there ever any doubt that Fire Island would go blue? We’ve been debating whether Kamala’s meme campaign is a good move for her prospects in the Free Press Slack, and here I’ll borrow from my older and wiser colleague Peter Savodnik: “There is nothing more pathetic than an older person who cares what a younger person thinks is cool.”
→ Boomer behavior: While Kamala’s campaign is being run by a 24-year-old twink with an Adderall prescription, J.D. Vance’s speechwriter seems to be a drunk Boomer who just got kicked out of a 7-11. Vance, appearing this week at a rally in Middletown, Ohio, riffed, “Democrats say that it is racist to believe. . . well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too.” Crickets. Horror. Major “Thanks, Obama” energy. There was also a bit on fried bologna sandwiches and a lot of “lemme tell you another story.” The guy is 39 but sounds older than Biden.
Fresher, 35-to-60-year-old blood is exactly what we’ve been begging for. Let the Boomers boom, let the Zoomers zoom. Kamala and J.D.: act your age.
July 26, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson
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