"Let's Go Crazy"
It sucks, but you gotta get wackadoodle to get voters' attention these days...
Here’s how New York Times Senior Editor David Leonhardt started his “The Morning” early-a.m. daily newsletter this morning:
Polls show that many of the policies enacted by President Biden are popular. His measures to reduce the cost of insulin and other drugs receive support from more than 80 percent of Americans. His infrastructure bill, his hawkish approach to China and his all-of-the-above energy policy, which combines expanded oil drilling with clean-energy subsidies, are popular, too.
But voters obviously like some of his policies more than others. And an unusual pattern seems to be hurting Biden’s re-election campaign: Voters are less aware of his most popular policies than his more divisive ones.
And I guess that last concept confuses me a bit. Is it unusual that more people know about his divisive policies than the practical, truly populist policies?
If you’re an average everyday American—someone who’s not an extremist, in either direction—then you’re probably not gonna hear about every policy the president’s administration trots out. Because you’re not tuned in consistently. And that’s OK—if, when you do tune in, you really tune in. Otherwise, the only presidential initiatives you do hear about will be the ones that are hot-enough topics to not only make news, but rile folks up as the news is being made.
So I guess it must just be a 2020s thing: Americans with diabetes know about Biden capping the cost of insulin, but if neither you nor a close loved one have that disease then you probably haven’t heard about it. Or at least it didn’t register quite the way Biden’s dilly-dallying on immigration reform has…or his hesitance to pressure Israel to ease up on the whole killing-five-innocent-women-and-children-for-every-one-Hamas-militant thing has.
I made up the 5-to-1 statistic. But it certainly feels like that’s what it is based on the stories I’ve read, seen, heard, or half-read, half-seen, or half-heard since Israel started retaliating for that unfathomably wicked October 7 Hamas attack. Which kinda speaks to the issue at hand: fair or not, right or wrong, average everyday Americans get their news piecemeal these days (including me a lot of the time).
That means, yeah, if it’s not eye-popping, wackadoodle, sensationalistic news—or if it’s not normal news that’s been promptly sensationalized—it’s not gonna land on enough people’s radars.
So we gotta go get crazy, Grandpa Joe!! Below please find a humble suggestion on how to let the vast majority of Americans know you capped insulin at $35 for everyone on Medicare (and are close to getting the private insurers to do the same. The whole story is complicated, as Associated Press reported recently, but Joe’s heart seems to be in the right place about it):
Short of that kind of performative political theater, of course folks are only gonna know about the more divisive stuff.
But the good news? Average everyday Americans are only paying attention to Trump World in piecemeal fashion, too. Which means they don’t know much about what’s going on with him, either—OTHER THAN, you know…he’s now a convicted felon.
So. Do we wanna vote for the old guy who’s doing some good things but took too long to seriously address the border or the atrocities in Gaza? (And who keeps telling me how great the economy is when it just doesn’t feel that great to me?) Or do we wanna vote for the other old guy, the one who’s a convicted felon?
If you’re like me, you’re wincing a little at how inconsequential these hush money charges appear compared to the circumstances behind the other three Trump indictments. (Hopefully casual news-followers have actually heard about those—namely: inciting the Capitol riots, interfering with a free and fair election, and hoarding nuclear secrets to casually show them around Mar-a-Lago to Lord-knows-who.)
But I’m feeling ever-so-slightly better and better about average everyday Americans holding their nose and pulling the lever for Grandpa Joe in November.
I think.
Pick a Number, Any Number
And for my next trick, I will once again ask a chatbot to pick a random number between 1 and (now) 1,066 so we can dish about another song on my “Recollection Records: Music That’s Entered My Head Out of Nowhere” Spotify playlist.
That’s right, it’s been almost five years since I started playlisting the songs that randomly materialize in my brain out of the clear blue sky for no apparent reason. And I’m up to 1,066 now. (And I’m just gonna ask Siri to pick the random number from now on…I don’t know why I was making things difficult and asking Perplexity or ChatGPT to do it when EVEN SIRI OR ALEXA can do that shit…)
Anyway. The number from 1 to 1,066 Siri has selected IS…
492.
And the 492nd song on my “Recollection Records: Music That’s Entered My Head Out of Nowhere” Spotify playlist?
Oh geez. I mean…I did not care for Seger for the longest time. Growing up in Northwest Ohio, right on the southern border of Michigan, meant non-stop Seger on allllll the classic rock radio stations (or at least what would eventually come to be known as “classic” rock stations…back then they were just rock stations, and Seger was just regular ol’ old-time rock ‘n’ roll).
But I was so damn sick of “Mainstreet” and “Turn the Page” and “Against the Wind” and—even before the truck commercials—“Like a Rock” and…actually I never got sick of “Night Moves.” That song’s vintage of cheese has always held just the right aroma for me. Its gouda-grade glory transcends its over-saturation of the airwaves.
But if you give me what’s basically a Harold Faltermeyer pop rock tune (Seger just wrote the lyrics)…in 1987, perhaps MTV’s most pop-culturally dominant year ever…and tack on a video featuring a glance of a lady’s aerobicized butt and a flash of Brigitte Nielsen’s 8-foot-long legs before the ramblin’ gamblin’ man even starts singing? Good enough for me.
DID YOU KNOW…this was Seger’s only No. 1 pop hit?!! I didn’t.
Thanks for reading! And watching!
Yours,
~Dean
P.S. Feel free to watch the “uncensored” version of the Seger video here. But it’s blurry, and as far as I can tell it commanded a censored version because it shows a stripper’s thonged behind, twice, for a total of 0.9 seconds.
P.P.S. Note to pre-“Shakedown” video shoot Bob Seger: I know you don’t care about these superficial showbiz things, and I don’t expect you to pop out in Eat ‘Em and Smile-era David Lee Roth spandex, but in 2024 we tend to call the pants you’re wearing in this video “dad jeans,” and…this is gonna be your biggest hit, man! I don’t know, at least pull on some light-pink pleated linen slacks or whatever Don Johnson was wearing in Miami Vice back then. Could you try a little bit??