The Age of ‘Isms

Plus Sydney Sweeney’s jeans, mass shooting in NYC and cultural wars from sea to shining sea...

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?”

~ Donald Trump, on the campaign trail in Iowa, 2016

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: New York City, New York...

“Hmm... I’m not sure I can take you to that part of the city.”

Our Uber driver was studying a map on his phone.

“What? You can’t go to... Midtown Manhattan?”

“Not sure. There was a mass shooting there a few hours ago, right by your hotel. The police had the entire area roped off. You might have to walk a few blocks.”

“Is it... umm... safe?”

“Well, the shooter already killed himself, if that’s what you mean. He was a black guy.”

Wondering what the man’s race had to do with anything, we decided to ask our driver, who might have described himself as “a brown guy.”

“Oh, everything’s about race here. One of the guys who was killed, a police officer, he was from Bangladesh, same as me. Had a wife and kids. Only been on the force a few years, I think. Welcome to America.”

Land of the Free

In the long and silent ride in from JFK that followed, we recalled the very first time we visited this city, this country. To an outsider, America is just like the rest of the world... except everything is dialed up to 11. And here, in its beating heart, where the money pumps and the city never sleeps, it’s cranked up even higher.

We first visited the Big Apple in August of 2001. We still have a Kodak photo somewhere, taken from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, looking downtown... toward the twin towers.

We ended up working in Lower Manhattan years later, on the corner of Wall and Broad, a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. Today, there’s another building in its place: the Freedom Tower. One wonders whether the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, is freer now than it was then, before the towers came down and the new era of endless wars began?

A quarter of a century later, we still get the same shivers when we see the Chrysler Building and the Brooklyn Bridge and the Flatiron Building. We still feel that rush of excitement when we pass Rockefeller Center and Grand Central Station and Madison Square Garden. This is a city like no other, in a country like no other.

And yet, to paraphrase that clever old Ephesian, Heraclitus, no man steps into the same city twice, for the city has changed... and so has he.

What, then, is different this time around? Is the country more divided than it was back then? Is “everything about race,” as our fellow, non-American alien assured us? And what does the prevailing political trend tell us about where we might be headed over the coming five... ten... twenty five years?

TDS vs TDS

In the final analysis, many fingers will be pointed at the man at the top of the tower, the president himself. Monday’s Midtown shooting happened just two blocks from Mr. Trump’s hypothetical “crime,” and just a few blocks from his own iconic building. There are those who believe he has divided the nation, perhaps beyond repair.

Trump’s detractors, said by the faithful to suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” think of him as a fascist... a Nazi... a Hitler incarnate. And they’re not afraid to say so, vociferously, stoking exactly the kind of firebrand rhetoric they accuse him of trafficking in.

And, not unlike mental patients, many of them exhibit bizarre, antisocial behavior. They are the blue-haired “libtards” we all see online, sitting in their cars by themselves in Walmart parking lots, screaming into their phones about being “misgendered,” forever perceiving themselves the victim of one imagined micro-aggression after another.

They wear blue “safety” bands to signal to each other that they’re not part of the “MAGA crowd,” and therefore safe to approach and engage in public. They cry when unfunny comedians lose their jobs, think the world is going to end in three years if they don’t recycle their copies of The Atlantic, and still keep an emergency KN95 mask in the glove compartment, just in case someone in a Tesla gets too close at the next traffic light.

Then there are the man’s die hard followers, whom Trump himself says would never desert him, not even if he shot someone out front of the St. Regis Hotel on a Monday afternoon. Like their opposite numbers, these folks might be said to suffer from another form of TDS, “Trump Devotion Syndrome,” where critical thinking, nuance and independence of mind are considered bugs, not features.

But for all his brashness and bombast, has Mr. Trump really divided the nation... or merely exploited, and perhaps deepened, pre-existing divisions? Stated another way, is Mr. Trump the cause of the palpable polarization in this country... or rather a symptom of an already divided culture?

The Jeans Genie

The latest melee between the TDS Right vs TDS Left factions comes off the back of an advertising campaign for that most American of consumer items: denim jeans.

The campaign, which was launched last weekend by American Eagle, features an adult female (woman) named Sydney Sweeney, an actress and model who – as we are assured by the ad’s tagline – “has great genes jeans.”

The ads feature Miss Sweeney writhing about in American Eagle denim, the camera creatively canvassing her curves while she breathes the copy...

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.” Then, when the camera lands on her eyes she adds, presumably for blind people, “My jeans are blue.”

Now, as a happily married man, we have no official nor publishable opinion regarding Miss Sweeney’s alleged sex appeal. We are “beauty blind” to all females but one. Naturally.

Predictably, America the Beautiful did not see it that way... and promptly divided along party lines.

For conservatives, the genes/jeans ad was a cute, garden variety dad pun which, coupled with Sweeney’s... ahem... “marketability,” quickly translated into American Eagle Outfitters stock jumping 11% on Wednesday.

“Woke is dead,” the victors declared.

Not so fast, replied the aggrieved, “healthy at any weight” crowd, for whom the concept “body positivity” stops at anything that might be perceived as remotely healthy, attractive or in any possible way desirable. This is not a simple “sex sells” formula, they retorted, it’s… “eugenics!”

Here’s aforementioned The Atlantic, caricaturing themselves so we don’t have to...

“... the ad copy about parents and offspring sounded less like a dictionary entry and more like a 4chan post—either politically obtuse or outrightly nefarious. Across platforms, people expressed their frustration that “Sydney Sweeney is advertising eugenics.” One of the posters offered context for their alarm, arguing that “historic fascist regimes have weaponized the feminine ideal,” ultimately linking femininity to motherhood and reproduction. Another said that, in the current political climate, a fair-skinned white woman musing about passing down her traits is “uncreative and unfunny.”

Act Your Age

Could it be that our driver was right after all, and everything really is about race... and sex, and gender, and all the other divisive “intersectionalities” in the critical race complex?

The more we thought about it, the more we reckoned on the cultural divisions pulling America apart, the more we felt like an outsider looking in. Indeed, as a straight, white, cis-gendered, adult male, fighting fit in the prime of his middle age, your editor was beginning to lament that he might be left out of the whole prejudice game altogether.

As the kids might say, we were having a “Why not #metoo?” moment.

Then, America reached out her open arms and welcomed us into the fray. In fact, we weren’t in the country six hours before our turn came. After dropping the bags at our hotel and safely ensconcing dear family in their new lodgings, your thirsty editor wandered downstairs to procure an emergency Californian zinfandel.

“Do you have ID?” the mirthless clerk belched from behind the counter. We produced first a driver's license, issued by the Australian government, which was coldly denied... then an official residence card, issued by the Argentine government, which was likewise denied.

“I’m gonna need to see a passport before I sell you that wine.”

Shocked, appalled and duly triggered, we appealed first to reason (“Do I look like I’m under 21 years of age?”)… then to authority (“Where is your manager?” “I am the manager.”)… and finally to emotion (“It’s been rather a long day, I’m sure you understand...”)

No dice. In the end, we could do nothing but leave the bottle on the counter, count ourselves a victim of flagrant “agism”... and proceed to aisle four, to look for the blue hair dye.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

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