January 25, 2022 • 41 mins
Roxane introduces the new podcast with her former co-host, Tressie McMillan Cottom. They talk about the new year, new endeavors (including a new dog), Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s vacuity, and the real meaning of Morgan Wallen’s mullet.
Mentions
- Tressie's New York Times newsletter: https://www.nytimes.com/column/tressie-mcmillan-cottom
Credits: Curtis Fox is the producer. Yessenia Moreno is the intern. Production help from Kaitlyn Adams. Theme music by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, I want to play something for you that
I really enjoyed some stand up comedy. Also, I think
they went about masks the wrong way. They were like,
wear a mask, save somebody else. Now, now we are
very selfish people. They should have been like, if you
think you're pretty, you'll wear a mask. Only que people
(00:24):
wear masks. If you like cuty with the body, you'll
wear a mask. That brilliant mask policy comes from Nicole
Buyer in her new Netflix special BBW or Big Black Weirdo,
which is out now. Because the ugliest motherfucker's didn't want
to wear the mask. No, they were like, what about
(00:48):
my civil liberties? I first discovered Nicole by way of
Nailed It, which is this hilarious baking show on Netflix
where bakers often make the most disastrous but well in
tended confections. The show is bighearted and funny, and as
an avid baker, I can absolutely relate to kitchen disasters
(01:09):
when baking and cake decorating go wrong. My god, they
go terribly wrong. And I've been catching her in a
new NBC show, Grand Crew, about a group of friends,
the wine bar they frequent, and the ups and downs
of their lives. It's funny and warm, and Nicole just shines.
Her humor is incisive and relevant, but she never demeans
(01:32):
herself to make a point. And right now, it's wonderful
to see a talented black woman on the come up.
I'm excited to see what she does next, and I
hope that you check out some of her work from Luminary.
Welcome to my new podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the
bad feminist podcast of your Dreams. I am well Roxane Gay.
(01:55):
At the top of every episode, I'm going to share
something that's on my mind or the I'm enjoying. I
just want to get us started off on the right foot.
We are recording in mid January. It is cold and
it is gloomy almost everywhere, including California. We are still
inexplicably neck deep in a pandemic which is stretching out
(02:18):
into a third year with the Omarian I mean Amicron variant.
It feels like people are burrowing back into their homes
while we wait to see what terrible thing is going
to happen next. I've actually started to become a bit
of a prepper, which is absolutely a sentence I never
thought I would say, but one night, I woke up
and thought I need a satellite tone. Alas, here we are,
(02:42):
but the new year is still fresh and right now
I want to talk about new beginnings. For example, I
have this new podcast every week on the Rock sand
Gay Agenda. I'm going to lay out my agenda for
all of you. That is to say, I'm going to
speak my mind about what's on my mind, and that
could be almost anything. Each week, I'm also going to
(03:02):
be in conversation with an interesting person. We're going to
talk about feminism, race, writing, books, art, food, pop culture,
and yes politics. We can't escape that. So welcome to
the Rock Sande Gay Agenda. Please make yourself at home.
In another new beginning, I'm starting a new job as
(03:25):
the president's professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles. I
missed teaching, so I'm excited to get back in the
classroom after two years away. But I've never taught during
a pandemic, so I'm also a little nervous. I don't
want to die for my job, and I guess we
will see what happens next. In some ways, that problem
has been solved, at least temporarily, because our semester startfood
(03:48):
has been pushed back by a week, and at least
the first week of classes are going to be held online.
I'm no stranger to teaching online, so it should be fine.
But I'm well aware that online learning is not conduce
to every student, and so I'm hoping for the best
while preparing for really the worst, because lately that seems
like the only thing we can do. I'm going to
(04:09):
be teaching one class of semester at Occidental, and this
semester I'm teaching my workshop on writing trauma once more,
and I'm really looking forward to seeing how students choose
to engage with this topic. And it's going to be
exciting to get back in the classroom and just honestly
to have somewhere to go once a week. As I
mentioned earlier on the Roxanne Gay Agenda, I'm going to
(04:31):
be in conversation with really interesting people. And today I
am speaking with a woman who absolutely needs no introduction.
You know her as a co host of the previous
iteration of this podcast, Here to Slay. Yes, it's the one,
the only. Truscy McMillan cottam brand new dog owner. Oh
it's Kirby, Oh my god, you can have them for
(04:54):
a dollar. You don't even have to call before you come.
No need to ask about the doggie in the window.
He is for sale. You just show on up. I'll
give you Kirby. I'll give you all of Kirby's stuff.
You could just take Kirby with you. Hey girl, Hey, hey, listen.
When I saw that you got a dog, I just thought,
(05:15):
what is happening in the world is coming to an end. Listen,
there's at this whole thing working out. Let's just be
very clear. Yes, I did not go into this with
my eyes clothes or with rose tinted glasses. I understood
that puppies were a lot of work. I understood that
I would be turning my life over to this creature
(05:36):
for a little while. But I did make some request
that we're supposed to make that transition easier. I asked
Roxanne for a lazy dog. I was very clear, getting
a dog is not the time to lie about who
you are. I am lazy. I wanted a lazy dog,
and they assured me because of the pandemic, I couldn't
(05:57):
go see him before I picked him up. But they
assured me that, oh this is he just sits over
there in the corner, didn't really play with his litter mates.
He's so chill. I said, great, I'll take that one.
Mm hmm, Roxane, that boy doesn't sit in the corner
at all. For you, does thing is not chill. This
(06:18):
is not a chill creature. Okay, but he's so cute.
Oh my gosh. If you guys follow Trescy on Instagram,
which you should, it's like a little ball of fur.
Absolutely a ridiculous thing to exist, isn't he He's about
four pounds now, so he's got his weight up, as
we might say. And uh, he is stubborn. He is
(06:41):
too smart for his own good. He's fearless. He jumps
off chairs and uh, he goes outside. He's like, no,
let's go over there, you know. And he doesn't belong
over there because he is only four pounds. Uh. He
tells me when he's ready to play, which, listen, that's
not how this works. Okay. So he's headstrong, he is stubborn. Uh,
(07:07):
he is fearless. All to say, he's nothing at all
like me. No, I mean what would you know about
being headstrong and fear Absolutely I wanted a nice, lazy, shy,
retiring dog and that is not what I got. So
does Max need a playmate? He does? You know, it's
funny you should say that. I never thought I would
(07:30):
think this, But he's been like kind of down in
the dumps lately and I don't know why. And you know,
if people who have too much time and probably too
much money, like I'm trying to like solve this problem,
and I keep thinking, I think Max needs a puppy?
What's his? How is this manifest when he's down in
the dumps? Normally he's very active, He's all around, he's
(07:51):
jumping up and down and being super puppy like. And
now he's just sort of lethargic. And he'll play with us, certainly,
but he just spends a lot of time lying down.
But his eyes are open. Every time you look at him,
he's just staring at you. And is he lethargic or
is he plotting your demise? It could be either one
(08:13):
and I'm not entirely sure, but I'm concerned either way.
Maybe a friend would distract him. What made you change
your mind? Well, I've been researching it, you know. I
go through these cycles of researching and thinking about it,
which is how I do every decision. By the time
I buy anything or commit to anything, I've usually been
(08:35):
thinking about it for ages, and so I'd cycling and
each time I'd cycled through there was just no way
my life could accommodate it. I thought this would be
unfair to live the kind of life that I lead
on the road, teaching, writing all night and have a dog,
and so usually it would boil down to it wouldn't
be fair to the dog. A couple of months ago, though,
Roxanna became clear We're never leaving. We're never leaving. No,
(08:59):
We're not. This is it like this is I mean,
I hope you have an comfortable home because because you're
you're in it, right. And it was clear to me
that we were re entering another phase of the pandemic
that is possibly more isolating than the earlier ones, because
you can see other people making different choices, right, and
somehow that makes it more isolating when you just started
(09:21):
not to make those choices, and I thought, well, I'm
at home. I am on sabbatical for my day job
as a professor for the next uh like nine months,
so I wasn't going into the office. I am focusing
on writing a book and some other writing projects, but
those are things I mostly do at home. I thought,
if I don't do it now, I won't do it
until I'm like seventy right, Like this was it for
(09:41):
me as a as a somewhat young ish adult person,
if I was going to be like able bodied in
a wake to play with the dog and then the
way I always make every major life decision at two am,
I just I just pressed the button, and so here
we are. And he showed up a few days later.
I see him in little outfits. So how extensive is
(10:03):
his wardrobe? Okay, so I have not bought that dog
in outfit. Let me tell you what happened ros saying, okay,
let me explain. You know what happened thrilled. So my
mother cannot contain yourself. So you need to know a
couple of things about Vivian. One. You need to know
this is the most unsentimental woman on the face of
God's green earth. My mother was a mother who would
(10:24):
get your little homemade cards from kids that you're supposed
to keep. Not my mama. She didn't even wait for
me to leave the room before she'd be like, that's nice,
and we'll put it on top of the garbage. Can't
you know? So you know that we're not keeping this.
There aren't tons of like all of Trusseys awards or
accolades are no Mama can take it or leave it.
She saw this damn dog could not contain herself. She
(10:49):
was on the road to my house within a couple
of days. The other thing you need to know is
all my life. My mother's doesn't like dogs, is a
little afraid of him. Same Kirby apparently isn't a dog.
I don't know what are you? Yes, yes, that's came
and quote unquote baby sat for a few days, which
(11:09):
was actually quite helpful because I went to sleep. So
she took care of Kirby when she was here. She
started buying him things. Every day she'd get up and
run out to the store. She'd tell me she came
back with sweaters, she came back with the Santa Alfit.
Christmas is over, okay, but she says, Christmas comes again
next year, and we'll be ready again. If Max needs
(11:32):
a playmate, I'll pay for the ticket. Oh yeah, because
I think he does. I'm Kirby is cute, but I
know you have another change in your life less significant
of course and certainly less important. But you are now
New York Times contributing opinion writer. Yes, yes, so I
talked about it. Let's talk about it. So what are
(11:53):
we doing over there? Who the heck knows? You know?
Most of the time, you know, I have a thing.
I don't really write to an audience. I care about
the audience, and I treat them like adults, and I
try to give them the best that I've got, but
I don't really think about them. So in my mind,
I don't so much right for The New York Times
every week so much as I sit down, I put
some words on a document and then I send it
(12:17):
into the ether. I'm as surprised as everybody when it publishes.
But yes, it runs every Monday. Now. We just changed
the date because I didn't like Fridays. I'm a I'm
a diva that way. Um. I told them I'm not
a news dump kind of girl. I don't like Friday,
so we moved into Mondays. You can start your week
with the newsletter from me at The New York Times,
and occasionally feeling for some people doing some other stuff.
(12:39):
We'll see how that goes. But my main focus there
right now is to build a conversation about the things
that I wish people were talking about in the way
I wish they would talk about them. So like, right
now we're talking about scams in American culture. We're talking
about how our institutions have gotten so fragile and so weak.
How are we in a pandemic and the government can't
(13:00):
figure out how to send your damn test? I don't
understand that. Listen, when Joe Biden told people to Google
how to get an at home test, I realized, you
know we are You and I have both said this
often that no one is coming to say and I
think a lot of us have understood that, but only
some of us have the means to save ourselves. And
(13:22):
so when he said that, I really just thought, Oh,
this pandemic is never end Yea, they can't figure this out.
We've turned over the entire functioning of civic institutions in
this country to private industry, and a handful of private industry,
(13:42):
uh corporations at that Google, Facebook, a couple of security firms,
a couple of gas companies. Right, we've just sort of
turned it over. And when things are kind of okay,
you can make do with that. But things aren't okay, no, not.
The scale of our problems is a government problem, and
(14:04):
it looks like the government has decided it's not even
going to try to pretend to be a government. The
other thing that struck me was when Biden said we
can't handle the pandemic at the federal level, which, sir,
you have an entire military, you have an entire government
with trillions of dollars at your disposal, I'm pretty sure
you can handle this, but that it was going to
(14:24):
be handled at the state level. And all of the
states are saying it's going to be handled at the
community level. And so from education all the way to vaccination,
to test distribution, and and really all of the components
of trying to handle the pandemic are being handled and
literally a thousand different ways. It's here's the thing. And then,
(14:46):
you know, and some people made a comment about all
he was just doing the pandering a president does to
mayors and governors. All of that may be true, but
here's what I know. I know that when the federal
government decides, for example, that something is is so vital
to the security and welfare of the United States of
America that they uh should care about it, and they
(15:09):
should invest in it. They will do anything. They will
do anything. Didn't even look thank you, We didn't even
have a direct threat after nine eleven, for example. And
when suddenly we're able to marshal every resource available right
to make it happen. The federal government can do whatever
(15:30):
it wants. It will then be sued by the States.
But guess what you do. You do what needs to
be done and then let this let the States sue you.
By the time it makes its way through the courts,
people's lives would have been saved and we would have
all moved on. That's exactly it. Let the litigation work
its way out. Yes, the Supreme Court is hostile. Wars
don't get a start on that. Yes, uh, the circuit
(15:52):
Uh courts are hostile. But you save people's lives, make
their lives better in the short term, and you clean
up the MESTI lated what the saying. Uh, it's better
to ask for forgiveness than permission. Yes, indeed, and it
seems like this administration is desperately waiting for permission to
cancel student loans to address inflation. You know, I keep
(16:17):
thinking you're never going to get that permission. Not because
people don't want to give it, but because the loudest
voices in the room are hell bent on denying everyone
really the access that they need to resources to live
better lives. It's kind of grotesque, you know, speaking of
our elected officials. I really enjoyed the newsletter you wrote. Well,
(16:39):
it was a series of newsletters about Kristen Cinema and
the slick the signals her clothing made. You enjoyed this
home girl didn't. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I mean, she,
from what I can tell, she really got, but that
you know why she got because you were right and
she knew she was called out. And for those of
(16:59):
you who have not yet read this essay, you absolutely
it's a series of essays, but you have to read
them because she talks about Trusty, talks about the startorial
choices that Kristen Cinema makes, and that it's a very
specific type of wealthy, thin white woman, pretty privileged, pretty
as subjective but subjectivileged. I don't find her all. I'm
(17:24):
a walk of fine line here, but let's just say
that privilege is very subjective. In the Senate, it is,
and and that's okay. We don't all need to be
God's beautiful children. But she thinks she's beautiful and like,
bless her heart. But it's interesting she you know when
she especially when she wore the denim jacket, that for
me just sent me over the edge because I just thought, Wow,
(17:46):
you're you are literally doing casual Friday in the Senate
and you can no one's going to call you out
on it, and in fact, the media is going to
just slobber all over you, like, look, she's being so edgy,
and I'm like, look, she's denying us the right to vote. Yeah,
let me tell you how many staffers I had contact
(18:08):
me on the slide saying I have been threatened with
expulsion from the Senate for not wearing pantyhose. I run
the risk of being fined or sanctioned if I show
up and I'm not wearing um a suit jacket. You
know the rules that apply to everybody else who comes.
(18:31):
Then we may say the rules are archaic and sexists
and classes, and they are. But if you're going to
ignore the rules for your own individual benefits, she doesn't
ignore the rules to make a case for her constituents, right,
That's what like black politicians and other queer politicians have
done before, which is we show up in our regalia
to make the case that hey, we belong here too.
(18:54):
But that's not what Miss Thing is doing. Miss Things
showing up and trying to capture all of the camera.
She's an attention hog. She has a need avoid inside her,
and she seems to thrive on all the attention. And unfortunately,
we have an absolutely absurd media that is more than
willing to give her that attention she so desperately needs,
(19:17):
and it creates this situation where nobody is willing to
critically engage with her. And you know, I can understand
why she would have bristled at your work because it
was so explicitly and correctly calling her out, But you
would think that she would want to be taken seriously
and want to be critically engaged. Well, she doesn't write
this to me was the tale. So I wrote I
(19:39):
think it was three or four essays about this, and
I talked to experts and did basically an analysis of
her media image, her presentation as politics and what that
means for the context that produced her, which is arizona Um,
and what she was trying to communicate and it mattered
for two reasons why. And it's not like Cinema gives interviews,
(20:04):
so she doesn't have her own, like on the record statement, right,
She's not making an affirmative case for what she wants,
what she believes in, how she's going to vote, So
she really kind of a shooes the media. Other than
trying to get her picture taken right, she doesn't give
good substantive interviews. So you got like this vacuum that
she's created that's by her design, and she's like the girl.
(20:27):
I said that to my editor at one point. I
was like, you know, the only other person who has
been so good at doing that that I could think
of is Beyonce. I was talking with some editors about,
you know, one of the people I might consider interviewing
the future, and I was like, Beyonce is a horrible
interview subject unless and until she's ready to just go
ham because she's gonna give you nothing and yet and
(20:47):
Cinema is the same way, gonna give you nothing. So
what she's presenting matters all the more because she doesn't
say anything meaningful. And it became really clear to me
in writing those pieces, the one that bothered her the
most was the third one. And I think this bothered
her because we were talking about her the social class,
the class presentation of what she was doing. And that's
(21:07):
when I got a real clue, especially you know, they
reached out to us her people, very angry, very pissed,
got wonderful email threads from the Senator staffers, and they
are just so not good at it because they told everything,
you know, one of those like you catch a man
cheating himself. And so what really bothered her was the
(21:28):
idea that she could not afford better, and that gave
me a clue as to what she thinks she's doing. Yeah,
she's manipulating the media, using her media image as cover
for her bad politics, by trying to say I'm so
vulnerable because look at me, right, I'm doing the best
(21:49):
I can with what with what I've got. And once
you puncture that, there was nothing serious beneath it. So, no,
she doesn't want to be taken seriously because I think
fundamentally she doesn't have anything really serious to say. I
would agree, and I can see why she would bristle
or take offense to that analysis. But you know, the
(22:10):
truth hurts, and I mean most of us hate being
confronted with painful truths about ourselves, but most of us
don't run, right, Like, we're smart enough to not put
ourselves in that position. And you know, this is an opportunity,
like for growth. She could really take this moment and
just sit with it and develop some politics, develop some
(22:32):
policy ideas of substance, or stop just being an obstacle
to progress. But no, she's gonna just continue like forcing her.
I mean, I would kind of feel bad for those
staffers or being forced. Yeah, they were. They had clearly
been held to task, right, they had clearly been called
on the carpet by her. Uh because they I mean,
(22:54):
I mean eight a day, right, they just I mean
they were firing them off like crazy everywhere they could
find me. They were leaving messages everywhere that they could
think to leave them. And it was clearly because she
was telephone message oh yeah girl, because they were clearly
that angry. Um. And it was again a very interesting
window and how she manages her team, what she ultimately
(23:15):
cares about. I pointed out her her yearly income, which
most candidates have to report on um, what all candidates
are supposed to report, and they don't all report it honestly. Um,
he says, you know, she's not one of the wealthier
people in Congress, and she I think that really explains
a lot of how she politics. She she is, by
(23:37):
congressional standards, broke, and she don't want to be broke. No,
she clearly doesn't. I do get class driving. I get
it intimately. And you know, there are some extraordinarily wealthy
people in the Senate, and I can imagine that the
senators who don't have, you know, like Nancy Pelosi's what
(23:59):
two million dollars or even like tens of millions or millions.
You know, those senators who are just sort of really
relying on that Senate paycheck must really suffer, not for
it's not even class envy, but this need to feel
like one of the gang when you are so clearly not.
She's basically the scholarship kids. She's the financial aid kid
(24:22):
at Harvard, you know. And you know those institutions always
do everything they can to remind you of your place.
And I have no doubt that happens in the center.
And I'm not going to cry for her. I was
about to say, I am empathetic, but not sympathetic, because
she used it for nefarious ends, but I suspect it's
actually brutal showing up at a place that is a
steeped in wealth and privilege as congresses. I mean, you've
(24:45):
got legacies, You've got people who are third fourth generation. Uh,
You've got people who disproportionately come from elite schools, and
you show up with like your state degree and coming
from like a Mormon background, very concerned praitive culture that
isn't from the East Coast or the West Coast. You
have no family connections or money, and you show up
(25:07):
and you wear a gene vest to preside over the U. S. Senate.
I mean, thank you for Hale. Let's be I know
you're not only writing for the New York Times. Uh.
The other day you published a really extraordinary and well
researched and just I really enjoyed it, great essay on
(25:29):
black country music in The Undefeated, and I loved just
I love seeing how in depth you got. So I
encourage everyone to read it. And we'll put the links
to these essays in the show notes. But one of
the things she writes about is attending eight Jason Isabel
shows in Nashville and really getting to know some of
(25:51):
these black women who are really the current vanguard of
country music and what they're up against. So what was
that like? Because I know that you into Nashville, you
stayed in a hotel, you brought your team. It was
just an event and it was a right It really
was in the best way. So the people followed me
(26:13):
for a long time know that my assistant and project manager,
Lauren has been with me for many years. UH, I
have a marketing consultant, Sarah came with me. Um my
longtime editor Kira came with me. Brought another one of um,
an assistant who was working with me on the project,
and we said, listen, if we were going to do this,
(26:33):
this is one of those things that I love doing.
So you and not you know, we've talked about it
on the show before you had rec Palmer on the show,
and we've talked about black women trying to create art
and spaces that are really hostile to them. And country
music is a very let's be clear, it's like a
middle brow popular culture, and so because of that, it
doesn't get a lot of serious engagement. Right, we just
(26:56):
don't take it as seriously as we do like rock
mu zick um more elite, middle brow, sort of um
popular culture, and we really don't take the women seriously,
and forget about taking black women seriously. And so Jason
Isabela is this country all country folk superstar. He's a
celebrity by all measures. And he was having a show
(27:19):
at the Rieman Theater there in Nashville, which is like
the home of country music is very sacred and important.
Playing your first show at the Rheman is you know, like,
you know, losing your virginity in the industry. And he's
gonna do this eight night residency and of the eight nights,
all of his opening acts are women. The first night,
(27:39):
Amanda Shire's opens. Amanda is both his wife and uh
creative um artists in her own right. And then the
other seven nights were all black women, several of them
queer black women, all of them you know, young, hungry,
talented black women who had country albums out in the
last year, and like that was a big deal. Country
(28:00):
music stages don't have a lot of black people, and
they really don't have a lot of black women. And
since I couldn't decide which show I wanted to go to,
I decided to go to all of them, and then
I said, well, it was during my birthday season, so
I decided to make it partly at birthday excursion. So yeah,
we hit au. We set up shop um at a
wonderful hotel if y'all ever in Nashville, The Hutton is
(28:21):
really really cool and beautiful and accessible. Uh. And so
I met with the women, went to the shows, hung
out in Nashville, both Black Nashville and white Nashville because
they ain't the same thing, uh, And hung out with
the women, talked to Jason Isabel talked about why he
would platform black women at this moment because there's a
lot happening over there. Listen anytime you watch your news,
(28:43):
and white folks are having sit ins at the mall
food court because they don't want to wear a mask.
You know, white people have gone crazy. Oh they have,
they absolutely have. Things are not good in the whiteness
right now. And in the land of whiteness, country mu
is still king. White people listen to country music, honey.
(29:04):
So if the if the white people are going crazy
at the mall, they are listening to country music on
the way there, and it's so beautiful. Black woman at
this moment, white nonsense, peak white nonsense, and you're trying
to play country music. They are brave and they're fearless,
and they're good and they're creative and they're amazing and
(29:26):
it was really an honor to talk to him and
uh and write about them. How did this happen out
of nowhere? We just refer to someone with a racial slur. No,
I don't think it was just it just happened. You know.
I was around some of my friends and you know,
we just we stay, we stay dump stuff together. Now,
(29:47):
speaking of sacred places in country music, the Grand Old
Opry and Morgan Wallen and word enthusiasts, I don't think
that anyone expected that there would be continued backlash, but
it like people are still like, no, he's not in
the club again yet. I mean, he's been in the club.
He's been fine. He's been selling millions of albums and
(30:08):
you know, getting the support of all of the people
who are also n word enthusiasts and don't want to
be called out for But what did you think about
bringing Morgan Wallen back on stage at the Opry And
what does that mean to all of these black women
in the business who have been working so hard and
managed to do so without sort of embarrassing themselves on
(30:32):
the idea that you can't be a country music star
or a star period. And listen, Morgan Walland was on
track to become like a star star. I think it's
really important for people to realize right before he gets
drunk and starts shouting at the end word like you know,
he go way back, uh and he don't go way back.
That boy, don't go way back to nowhere. It's not
like he grew up. There's a people who can kind
(30:53):
of borderline get away with. You can see how they
could be confused. You know if you grew up in
the hood and like that, ain't that boy that's a
country redneck boy by his own self identification with a mullet.
Ain't no white boy when no mullet got a pass nowhere. Okay,
So Morgan Walland does not have a pass. He's not
(31:15):
even like black adjacent, and he goes it gets called
getting drunk and doing what like red nicky white boys
do these days. You know, it's cool and radical to
shout out the N word and say all this stuff. Okay,
say all the bad words, and like you know, overnight
because this is you know, during the Black Lives Matter backlash.
(31:35):
He's like a race from country radio and the awards
season and all that. But listen, country fans, those same
white people who are mad and going to the mall
playing country music on the way, they love that boy.
They made that album number one. It's like one of
the best selling albums of last year. But the institutions
of country music had made a call that said they
(31:56):
weren't going to support that kind of thing. Um And listen,
a lot of country music artists are just as conservative
as their audience is, and there have been a lot
of push not just from the fans, but from inside.
You know, the call is coming from inside the house.
So I think it's really interesting that Morgan Wallan wasn't
like officially invited to the opery. He's there as a
(32:16):
guest of an artist who brings him out Right, they're
gonna back and if they're gonna shoot worn And I
think I think it was Jason Aldan wasn't know it
wasn't Jason's old coked up looking behind. I'm sorry, is
that brought him out. I'm actually gonna look out trying
to am't gonna look at it. I can't believe it's
(32:37):
only been somebody and I just don't know him. It's
the problem. I'm not sure. I'm not well so someone
who I thought it was a big country star who
wasn't going to have anything to lose, but apparently not. No,
this is like a phone boy, right, So this artist
Ernest brings him out during his um opery set, and
it's the way. It's a way to like, yeah, to
(32:59):
force him act onto the legitimate country music stage, kind
of shove them down the throat of the industry and
say it's enough. Right, he's been in purgatory enough. A
lot of fans are clamoring for it. The problem is
the Opery, just like the Rieman, just like country music radio,
just like Nashville rit Large, hasn't yet made good on
(33:20):
its promise to the black artist that they made promises
to after Wallin was you know, excommunicated. They're supposed to
be opening up spaces for artists not just to perform,
but to do songwriting, producing like the The artists in Nashville,
probably more than any other place in the country except
(33:41):
for l A, are like working artists. There are people there.
They get up and go to their job as a musician.
So when you're cut out of that, that's just like
labor market district discrimination, not having people in Nashville can
just get up and go to work as a musician.
And so those spaces are supposed to be making those
opportunities that they and they haven't yet. Wilin himself made
(34:02):
promises to donate money and do all this, and somebody
keeps following a penny has left with his team, and
of course none of it has happened, right, So doing
all of the cosmetic lip service is sort of a
thumb in the nose of the whole thing and saying,
you know, kind of how dare you? He's got like
a song out with a rapper, right, He's doing everything
that just consinby piss people off, and he's happy about it,
(34:25):
like he knows what he's doing. He's sort of like
doing those little hand signals at the white exactly on TV.
And you know, he's dog whistling all over the place
to his people while sort of pretending like, look at
me doing the right thing. That's exactly what it is.
He's doing a little okay symbol. He doesn't even have
(34:46):
like the balls to just come out and say funcky'll
you know that would actually be kind of wouldn't mind
because when people show who they are, they show who
they are and then they reap the consequences one way
or another or both ways, and that's fine. Don't pretend
to be something other than what you are. The haircut
already told us who, so you don't need to pretend
(35:08):
to be otherwise because like you groom it, you groom
the mullet, you grow the mullet. You have made a
conscious decision. You're committed to it, so we know what
else you're committed to embrace yourself. It would be rock
and roll of him, actually, if he would just say yeah,
kind of would and frankly, he would just get even
(35:29):
more popular. He may never be able to perform in
sort of the hallowed stages of Nashville ever again, but
he would never want for money, right. He would be
legend among a huge contingent of the country music audience
if he did that, because it would be kind of
punk rock of him. But he doesn't have those balls, right,
he doesn't have the conviction. Again, the man has a mullet.
(35:53):
I mean, the mullet really explains everything. In every direction.
The more we talk about it, the more the mullet
is actually the symbol that matters. Every time I see
a mullet in the wild, I have to say, I mean,
I grew up around a lot of mullets in Omaha,
and also I grew up in the eighties when the
mullet was truly like the hairstyle, and so I, except
(36:14):
for him, I have a fondness every time I see it.
And I've never seen an unkempt mullet. People who have
mullets they like condition their hair, they comb it, they choose,
they keep it neatly trimmed, like they're saying, this is
not accellent. I am choosing to be business on top,
(36:37):
party in the back. Don't you forget it? It is Listen.
It is a bold person who chooses to be a
human chia pet. So like that is already a person
who is not willing to be bowed by social convention.
So yeah, you gotta have a little respect for that. So, yeah,
you know what it is. He hasn't earned the mullet,
that's it, you know what that is it. He's wearing
(37:02):
it because he thinks that makes him like authentic and
sort of down home as shucks. I have a couple
of trucks on some cinder blocks out back. I'm one
of the people. But it's just no, you're maybe not
that's right, and you know you don't come by it honestly.
It's not an honest mullet. I think that's it, you
(37:23):
know what, That's exactly what it is. Morgan Wallen hasn't
earned his mullet. I could talk to you forever and ever.
But as we sort of bring this to a close,
what are your hopes for the new year, if any,
given that we had thought we were getting out of prison,
(37:45):
but not so fast. I hope that on that front,
on the pandemic front, I hope that the rest of
the world could finally get equitable access to their first
round of vaccine before we start handing out like our
fourth around here in the United States. Because of in
the way that Wallin hasn't earned his mullet, we really
(38:06):
haven't earned our scientific advancements because we're not treating them
with respect um and so I hope that for the
rest of the world, I really do. And then I
hope that we get better treatment if it is the
case that we're not going to be able to control
every variant. I hope we get better treatment because until
we do, UM, we're all going to be imprisoned by UM,
(38:28):
this virus UM. Politically, I hope we start to hold
two task very seriously, politicians who have decided to sell
our institutions to the highest bidder M, because that's really
what we're living with right now, institutional atrophy and decay UM.
And this is a moment of pause when we could
(38:50):
really really start to clause some of that back. I
hope for everybody that you get to get outside and
nice weather, just as soon as we are able. Winter
during COVID it has just been the worst. It's not
just that like the diseases out there and everybody's failing you,
but it's cold and you're locked inside unless you're in California,
and I already don't trust you people, but the rest
(39:12):
of us are like suffering. And so I hope spring
comes back around as soon as it can. And then
you know, personally, I'm I decided to commit this year
to only doing passion projects. I'm only working on things
that I'm extremely passionate about. That's the gift I'm giving
myself and I'm really looking forward to unwrapping that gift
(39:32):
this year. Well, trustee, my friend, thank you so much
for joining me on the first episode of this podcast.
So I get all the news alerts you know for
your name, and of course the old standby it will
never not tickle me. Yesterday the news alert was the
Rock Sand Homosexual Agenda launches Google translates. The other day,
(39:55):
I read a great article about Rock Sand Homosexual and
I was like, yes, it will her to will it
will never fail to amuse me. So I am forever
a fan and so grateful I get to be your friend.
Same thank you, and our listeners are going to miss you,
but I know that you're doing exciting things and I
am just so thrilled for you to be doing passion projects.
(40:15):
That is that's the dream. May we all find our
passion projects this year. For all of you listening, you
can keep up with me and the podcast on social media.
You can find me on Twitter at r G A
Y and on Instagram at Roxanne J seven four. Our
email if you want to reach us and share feedback
(40:37):
or just let us know how you're doing, is Roxanne
Gay Agenda at gmail dot com. From Luminary. The Roxane
Gay Podcast is produced by Curtis Fox our interns. Moreno
production support is provided by Kitman Adams. I am Roxanne
Gay or favorite bad feminist. Thank you for listening. The deputed,
(41:00):
The Dict
Hey there, I want to play something for you that
I really enjoyed some stand up comedy. Also, I think
they went about masks the wrong way. They were like,
wear a mask, save somebody else. Now, now we are
very selfish people. They should have been like, if you
think you're pretty, you'll wear a mask. Only que people
(00:24):
wear masks. If you like cuty with the body, you'll
wear a mask. That brilliant mask policy comes from Nicole
Buyer in her new Netflix special BBW or Big Black Weirdo,
which is out now. Because the ugliest motherfucker's didn't want
to wear the mask. No, they were like, what about
(00:48):
my civil liberties? I first discovered Nicole by way of
Nailed It, which is this hilarious baking show on Netflix
where bakers often make the most disastrous but well in
tended confections. The show is bighearted and funny, and as
an avid baker, I can absolutely relate to kitchen disasters
(01:09):
when baking and cake decorating go wrong. My god, they
go terribly wrong. And I've been catching her in a
new NBC show, Grand Crew, about a group of friends,
the wine bar they frequent, and the ups and downs
of their lives. It's funny and warm, and Nicole just shines.
Her humor is incisive and relevant, but she never demeans
(01:32):
herself to make a point. And right now, it's wonderful
to see a talented black woman on the come up.
I'm excited to see what she does next, and I
hope that you check out some of her work from Luminary.
Welcome to my new podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the
bad feminist podcast of your Dreams. I am well Roxane Gay.
(01:55):
At the top of every episode, I'm going to share
something that's on my mind or the I'm enjoying. I
just want to get us started off on the right foot.
We are recording in mid January. It is cold and
it is gloomy almost everywhere, including California. We are still
inexplicably neck deep in a pandemic which is stretching out
(02:18):
into a third year with the Omarian I mean Amicron variant.
It feels like people are burrowing back into their homes
while we wait to see what terrible thing is going
to happen next. I've actually started to become a bit
of a prepper, which is absolutely a sentence I never
thought I would say, but one night, I woke up
and thought I need a satellite tone. Alas, here we are,
(02:42):
but the new year is still fresh and right now
I want to talk about new beginnings. For example, I
have this new podcast every week on the Rock sand
Gay Agenda. I'm going to lay out my agenda for
all of you. That is to say, I'm going to
speak my mind about what's on my mind, and that
could be almost anything. Each week, I'm also going to
(03:02):
be in conversation with an interesting person. We're going to
talk about feminism, race, writing, books, art, food, pop culture,
and yes politics. We can't escape that. So welcome to
the Rock Sande Gay Agenda. Please make yourself at home.
In another new beginning, I'm starting a new job as
(03:25):
the president's professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles. I
missed teaching, so I'm excited to get back in the
classroom after two years away. But I've never taught during
a pandemic, so I'm also a little nervous. I don't
want to die for my job, and I guess we
will see what happens next. In some ways, that problem
has been solved, at least temporarily, because our semester startfood
(03:48):
has been pushed back by a week, and at least
the first week of classes are going to be held online.
I'm no stranger to teaching online, so it should be fine.
But I'm well aware that online learning is not conduce
to every student, and so I'm hoping for the best
while preparing for really the worst, because lately that seems
like the only thing we can do. I'm going to
(04:09):
be teaching one class of semester at Occidental, and this
semester I'm teaching my workshop on writing trauma once more,
and I'm really looking forward to seeing how students choose
to engage with this topic. And it's going to be
exciting to get back in the classroom and just honestly
to have somewhere to go once a week. As I
mentioned earlier on the Roxanne Gay Agenda, I'm going to
(04:31):
be in conversation with really interesting people. And today I
am speaking with a woman who absolutely needs no introduction.
You know her as a co host of the previous
iteration of this podcast, Here to Slay. Yes, it's the one,
the only. Truscy McMillan cottam brand new dog owner. Oh
it's Kirby, Oh my god, you can have them for
(04:54):
a dollar. You don't even have to call before you come.
No need to ask about the doggie in the window.
He is for sale. You just show on up. I'll
give you Kirby. I'll give you all of Kirby's stuff.
You could just take Kirby with you. Hey girl, Hey, hey, listen.
When I saw that you got a dog, I just thought,
(05:15):
what is happening in the world is coming to an end. Listen,
there's at this whole thing working out. Let's just be
very clear. Yes, I did not go into this with
my eyes clothes or with rose tinted glasses. I understood
that puppies were a lot of work. I understood that
I would be turning my life over to this creature
(05:36):
for a little while. But I did make some request
that we're supposed to make that transition easier. I asked
Roxanne for a lazy dog. I was very clear, getting
a dog is not the time to lie about who
you are. I am lazy. I wanted a lazy dog,
and they assured me because of the pandemic, I couldn't
(05:57):
go see him before I picked him up. But they
assured me that, oh this is he just sits over
there in the corner, didn't really play with his litter mates.
He's so chill. I said, great, I'll take that one.
Mm hmm, Roxane, that boy doesn't sit in the corner
at all. For you, does thing is not chill. This
(06:18):
is not a chill creature. Okay, but he's so cute.
Oh my gosh. If you guys follow Trescy on Instagram,
which you should, it's like a little ball of fur.
Absolutely a ridiculous thing to exist, isn't he He's about
four pounds now, so he's got his weight up, as
we might say. And uh, he is stubborn. He is
(06:41):
too smart for his own good. He's fearless. He jumps
off chairs and uh, he goes outside. He's like, no,
let's go over there, you know. And he doesn't belong
over there because he is only four pounds. Uh. He
tells me when he's ready to play, which, listen, that's
not how this works. Okay. So he's headstrong, he is stubborn. Uh,
(07:07):
he is fearless. All to say, he's nothing at all
like me. No, I mean what would you know about
being headstrong and fear Absolutely I wanted a nice, lazy, shy,
retiring dog and that is not what I got. So
does Max need a playmate? He does? You know, it's
funny you should say that. I never thought I would
(07:30):
think this, But he's been like kind of down in
the dumps lately and I don't know why. And you know,
if people who have too much time and probably too
much money, like I'm trying to like solve this problem,
and I keep thinking, I think Max needs a puppy?
What's his? How is this manifest when he's down in
the dumps? Normally he's very active, He's all around, he's
(07:51):
jumping up and down and being super puppy like. And
now he's just sort of lethargic. And he'll play with us, certainly,
but he just spends a lot of time lying down.
But his eyes are open. Every time you look at him,
he's just staring at you. And is he lethargic or
is he plotting your demise? It could be either one
(08:13):
and I'm not entirely sure, but I'm concerned either way.
Maybe a friend would distract him. What made you change
your mind? Well, I've been researching it, you know. I
go through these cycles of researching and thinking about it,
which is how I do every decision. By the time
I buy anything or commit to anything, I've usually been
(08:35):
thinking about it for ages, and so I'd cycling and
each time I'd cycled through there was just no way
my life could accommodate it. I thought this would be
unfair to live the kind of life that I lead
on the road, teaching, writing all night and have a dog,
and so usually it would boil down to it wouldn't
be fair to the dog. A couple of months ago, though,
Roxanna became clear We're never leaving. We're never leaving. No,
(08:59):
We're not. This is it like this is I mean,
I hope you have an comfortable home because because you're
you're in it, right. And it was clear to me
that we were re entering another phase of the pandemic
that is possibly more isolating than the earlier ones, because
you can see other people making different choices, right, and
somehow that makes it more isolating when you just started
(09:21):
not to make those choices, and I thought, well, I'm
at home. I am on sabbatical for my day job
as a professor for the next uh like nine months,
so I wasn't going into the office. I am focusing
on writing a book and some other writing projects, but
those are things I mostly do at home. I thought,
if I don't do it now, I won't do it
until I'm like seventy right, Like this was it for
(09:41):
me as a as a somewhat young ish adult person,
if I was going to be like able bodied in
a wake to play with the dog and then the
way I always make every major life decision at two am,
I just I just pressed the button, and so here
we are. And he showed up a few days later.
I see him in little outfits. So how extensive is
(10:03):
his wardrobe? Okay, so I have not bought that dog
in outfit. Let me tell you what happened ros saying, okay,
let me explain. You know what happened thrilled. So my
mother cannot contain yourself. So you need to know a
couple of things about Vivian. One. You need to know
this is the most unsentimental woman on the face of
God's green earth. My mother was a mother who would
(10:24):
get your little homemade cards from kids that you're supposed
to keep. Not my mama. She didn't even wait for
me to leave the room before she'd be like, that's nice,
and we'll put it on top of the garbage. Can't
you know? So you know that we're not keeping this.
There aren't tons of like all of Trusseys awards or
accolades are no Mama can take it or leave it.
She saw this damn dog could not contain herself. She
(10:49):
was on the road to my house within a couple
of days. The other thing you need to know is
all my life. My mother's doesn't like dogs, is a
little afraid of him. Same Kirby apparently isn't a dog.
I don't know what are you? Yes, yes, that's came
and quote unquote baby sat for a few days, which
(11:09):
was actually quite helpful because I went to sleep. So
she took care of Kirby when she was here. She
started buying him things. Every day she'd get up and
run out to the store. She'd tell me she came
back with sweaters, she came back with the Santa Alfit.
Christmas is over, okay, but she says, Christmas comes again
next year, and we'll be ready again. If Max needs
(11:32):
a playmate, I'll pay for the ticket. Oh yeah, because
I think he does. I'm Kirby is cute, but I
know you have another change in your life less significant
of course and certainly less important. But you are now
New York Times contributing opinion writer. Yes, yes, so I
talked about it. Let's talk about it. So what are
(11:53):
we doing over there? Who the heck knows? You know?
Most of the time, you know, I have a thing.
I don't really write to an audience. I care about
the audience, and I treat them like adults, and I
try to give them the best that I've got, but
I don't really think about them. So in my mind,
I don't so much right for The New York Times
every week so much as I sit down, I put
some words on a document and then I send it
(12:17):
into the ether. I'm as surprised as everybody when it publishes.
But yes, it runs every Monday. Now. We just changed
the date because I didn't like Fridays. I'm a I'm
a diva that way. Um. I told them I'm not
a news dump kind of girl. I don't like Friday,
so we moved into Mondays. You can start your week
with the newsletter from me at The New York Times,
and occasionally feeling for some people doing some other stuff.
(12:39):
We'll see how that goes. But my main focus there
right now is to build a conversation about the things
that I wish people were talking about in the way
I wish they would talk about them. So like, right
now we're talking about scams in American culture. We're talking
about how our institutions have gotten so fragile and so weak.
How are we in a pandemic and the government can't
(13:00):
figure out how to send your damn test? I don't
understand that. Listen, when Joe Biden told people to Google
how to get an at home test, I realized, you
know we are You and I have both said this
often that no one is coming to say and I
think a lot of us have understood that, but only
some of us have the means to save ourselves. And
(13:22):
so when he said that, I really just thought, Oh,
this pandemic is never end Yea, they can't figure this out.
We've turned over the entire functioning of civic institutions in
this country to private industry, and a handful of private industry,
(13:42):
uh corporations at that Google, Facebook, a couple of security firms,
a couple of gas companies. Right, we've just sort of
turned it over. And when things are kind of okay,
you can make do with that. But things aren't okay, no, not.
The scale of our problems is a government problem, and
(14:04):
it looks like the government has decided it's not even
going to try to pretend to be a government. The
other thing that struck me was when Biden said we
can't handle the pandemic at the federal level, which, sir,
you have an entire military, you have an entire government
with trillions of dollars at your disposal, I'm pretty sure
you can handle this, but that it was going to
(14:24):
be handled at the state level. And all of the
states are saying it's going to be handled at the
community level. And so from education all the way to vaccination,
to test distribution, and and really all of the components
of trying to handle the pandemic are being handled and
literally a thousand different ways. It's here's the thing. And then,
(14:46):
you know, and some people made a comment about all
he was just doing the pandering a president does to
mayors and governors. All of that may be true, but
here's what I know. I know that when the federal
government decides, for example, that something is is so vital
to the security and welfare of the United States of
America that they uh should care about it, and they
(15:09):
should invest in it. They will do anything. They will
do anything. Didn't even look thank you, We didn't even
have a direct threat after nine eleven, for example. And
when suddenly we're able to marshal every resource available right
to make it happen. The federal government can do whatever
(15:30):
it wants. It will then be sued by the States.
But guess what you do. You do what needs to
be done and then let this let the States sue you.
By the time it makes its way through the courts,
people's lives would have been saved and we would have
all moved on. That's exactly it. Let the litigation work
its way out. Yes, the Supreme Court is hostile. Wars
don't get a start on that. Yes, uh, the circuit
(15:52):
Uh courts are hostile. But you save people's lives, make
their lives better in the short term, and you clean
up the MESTI lated what the saying. Uh, it's better
to ask for forgiveness than permission. Yes, indeed, and it
seems like this administration is desperately waiting for permission to
cancel student loans to address inflation. You know, I keep
(16:17):
thinking you're never going to get that permission. Not because
people don't want to give it, but because the loudest
voices in the room are hell bent on denying everyone
really the access that they need to resources to live
better lives. It's kind of grotesque, you know, speaking of
our elected officials. I really enjoyed the newsletter you wrote. Well,
(16:39):
it was a series of newsletters about Kristen Cinema and
the slick the signals her clothing made. You enjoyed this
home girl didn't. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I mean, she,
from what I can tell, she really got, but that
you know why she got because you were right and
she knew she was called out. And for those of
(16:59):
you who have not yet read this essay, you absolutely
it's a series of essays, but you have to read
them because she talks about Trusty, talks about the startorial
choices that Kristen Cinema makes, and that it's a very
specific type of wealthy, thin white woman, pretty privileged, pretty
as subjective but subjectivileged. I don't find her all. I'm
(17:24):
a walk of fine line here, but let's just say
that privilege is very subjective. In the Senate, it is,
and and that's okay. We don't all need to be
God's beautiful children. But she thinks she's beautiful and like,
bless her heart. But it's interesting she you know when
she especially when she wore the denim jacket, that for
me just sent me over the edge because I just thought, Wow,
(17:46):
you're you are literally doing casual Friday in the Senate
and you can no one's going to call you out
on it, and in fact, the media is going to
just slobber all over you, like, look, she's being so edgy,
and I'm like, look, she's denying us the right to vote. Yeah,
let me tell you how many staffers I had contact
(18:08):
me on the slide saying I have been threatened with
expulsion from the Senate for not wearing pantyhose. I run
the risk of being fined or sanctioned if I show
up and I'm not wearing um a suit jacket. You
know the rules that apply to everybody else who comes.
(18:31):
Then we may say the rules are archaic and sexists
and classes, and they are. But if you're going to
ignore the rules for your own individual benefits, she doesn't
ignore the rules to make a case for her constituents, right,
That's what like black politicians and other queer politicians have
done before, which is we show up in our regalia
to make the case that hey, we belong here too.
(18:54):
But that's not what Miss Thing is doing. Miss Things
showing up and trying to capture all of the camera.
She's an attention hog. She has a need avoid inside her,
and she seems to thrive on all the attention. And unfortunately,
we have an absolutely absurd media that is more than
willing to give her that attention she so desperately needs,
(19:17):
and it creates this situation where nobody is willing to
critically engage with her. And you know, I can understand
why she would have bristled at your work because it
was so explicitly and correctly calling her out, But you
would think that she would want to be taken seriously
and want to be critically engaged. Well, she doesn't write
this to me was the tale. So I wrote I
(19:39):
think it was three or four essays about this, and
I talked to experts and did basically an analysis of
her media image, her presentation as politics and what that
means for the context that produced her, which is arizona Um,
and what she was trying to communicate and it mattered
for two reasons why. And it's not like Cinema gives interviews,
(20:04):
so she doesn't have her own, like on the record statement, right,
She's not making an affirmative case for what she wants,
what she believes in, how she's going to vote, So
she really kind of a shooes the media. Other than
trying to get her picture taken right, she doesn't give
good substantive interviews. So you got like this vacuum that
she's created that's by her design, and she's like the girl.
(20:27):
I said that to my editor at one point. I
was like, you know, the only other person who has
been so good at doing that that I could think
of is Beyonce. I was talking with some editors about,
you know, one of the people I might consider interviewing
the future, and I was like, Beyonce is a horrible
interview subject unless and until she's ready to just go
ham because she's gonna give you nothing and yet and
(20:47):
Cinema is the same way, gonna give you nothing. So
what she's presenting matters all the more because she doesn't
say anything meaningful. And it became really clear to me
in writing those pieces, the one that bothered her the
most was the third one. And I think this bothered
her because we were talking about her the social class,
the class presentation of what she was doing. And that's
(21:07):
when I got a real clue, especially you know, they
reached out to us her people, very angry, very pissed,
got wonderful email threads from the Senator staffers, and they
are just so not good at it because they told everything,
you know, one of those like you catch a man
cheating himself. And so what really bothered her was the
(21:28):
idea that she could not afford better, and that gave
me a clue as to what she thinks she's doing. Yeah,
she's manipulating the media, using her media image as cover
for her bad politics, by trying to say I'm so
vulnerable because look at me, right, I'm doing the best
(21:49):
I can with what with what I've got. And once
you puncture that, there was nothing serious beneath it. So, no,
she doesn't want to be taken seriously because I think
fundamentally she doesn't have anything really serious to say. I
would agree, and I can see why she would bristle
or take offense to that analysis. But you know, the
(22:10):
truth hurts, and I mean most of us hate being
confronted with painful truths about ourselves, but most of us
don't run, right, Like, we're smart enough to not put
ourselves in that position. And you know, this is an opportunity,
like for growth. She could really take this moment and
just sit with it and develop some politics, develop some
(22:32):
policy ideas of substance, or stop just being an obstacle
to progress. But no, she's gonna just continue like forcing her.
I mean, I would kind of feel bad for those
staffers or being forced. Yeah, they were. They had clearly
been held to task, right, they had clearly been called
on the carpet by her. Uh because they I mean,
(22:54):
I mean eight a day, right, they just I mean
they were firing them off like crazy everywhere they could
find me. They were leaving messages everywhere that they could
think to leave them. And it was clearly because she
was telephone message oh yeah girl, because they were clearly
that angry. Um. And it was again a very interesting
window and how she manages her team, what she ultimately
(23:15):
cares about. I pointed out her her yearly income, which
most candidates have to report on um, what all candidates
are supposed to report, and they don't all report it honestly. Um,
he says, you know, she's not one of the wealthier
people in Congress, and she I think that really explains
a lot of how she politics. She she is, by
(23:37):
congressional standards, broke, and she don't want to be broke. No,
she clearly doesn't. I do get class driving. I get
it intimately. And you know, there are some extraordinarily wealthy
people in the Senate, and I can imagine that the
senators who don't have, you know, like Nancy Pelosi's what
(23:59):
two million dollars or even like tens of millions or millions.
You know, those senators who are just sort of really
relying on that Senate paycheck must really suffer, not for
it's not even class envy, but this need to feel
like one of the gang when you are so clearly not.
She's basically the scholarship kids. She's the financial aid kid
(24:22):
at Harvard, you know. And you know those institutions always
do everything they can to remind you of your place.
And I have no doubt that happens in the center.
And I'm not going to cry for her. I was
about to say, I am empathetic, but not sympathetic, because
she used it for nefarious ends, but I suspect it's
actually brutal showing up at a place that is a
steeped in wealth and privilege as congresses. I mean, you've
(24:45):
got legacies, You've got people who are third fourth generation. Uh,
You've got people who disproportionately come from elite schools, and
you show up with like your state degree and coming
from like a Mormon background, very concerned praitive culture that
isn't from the East Coast or the West Coast. You
have no family connections or money, and you show up
(25:07):
and you wear a gene vest to preside over the U. S. Senate.
I mean, thank you for Hale. Let's be I know
you're not only writing for the New York Times. Uh.
The other day you published a really extraordinary and well
researched and just I really enjoyed it, great essay on
(25:29):
black country music in The Undefeated, and I loved just
I love seeing how in depth you got. So I
encourage everyone to read it. And we'll put the links
to these essays in the show notes. But one of
the things she writes about is attending eight Jason Isabel
shows in Nashville and really getting to know some of
(25:51):
these black women who are really the current vanguard of
country music and what they're up against. So what was
that like? Because I know that you into Nashville, you
stayed in a hotel, you brought your team. It was
just an event and it was a right It really
was in the best way. So the people followed me
(26:13):
for a long time know that my assistant and project manager,
Lauren has been with me for many years. UH, I
have a marketing consultant, Sarah came with me. Um my
longtime editor Kira came with me. Brought another one of um,
an assistant who was working with me on the project,
and we said, listen, if we were going to do this,
(26:33):
this is one of those things that I love doing.
So you and not you know, we've talked about it
on the show before you had rec Palmer on the show,
and we've talked about black women trying to create art
and spaces that are really hostile to them. And country
music is a very let's be clear, it's like a
middle brow popular culture, and so because of that, it
doesn't get a lot of serious engagement. Right, we just
(26:56):
don't take it as seriously as we do like rock
mu zick um more elite, middle brow, sort of um
popular culture, and we really don't take the women seriously,
and forget about taking black women seriously. And so Jason
Isabela is this country all country folk superstar. He's a
celebrity by all measures. And he was having a show
(27:19):
at the Rieman Theater there in Nashville, which is like
the home of country music is very sacred and important.
Playing your first show at the Rheman is you know, like,
you know, losing your virginity in the industry. And he's
gonna do this eight night residency and of the eight nights,
all of his opening acts are women. The first night,
(27:39):
Amanda Shire's opens. Amanda is both his wife and uh
creative um artists in her own right. And then the
other seven nights were all black women, several of them
queer black women, all of them you know, young, hungry,
talented black women who had country albums out in the
last year, and like that was a big deal. Country
(28:00):
music stages don't have a lot of black people, and
they really don't have a lot of black women. And
since I couldn't decide which show I wanted to go to,
I decided to go to all of them, and then
I said, well, it was during my birthday season, so
I decided to make it partly at birthday excursion. So yeah,
we hit au. We set up shop um at a
wonderful hotel if y'all ever in Nashville, The Hutton is
(28:21):
really really cool and beautiful and accessible. Uh. And so
I met with the women, went to the shows, hung
out in Nashville, both Black Nashville and white Nashville because
they ain't the same thing, uh, And hung out with
the women, talked to Jason Isabel talked about why he
would platform black women at this moment because there's a
lot happening over there. Listen anytime you watch your news,
(28:43):
and white folks are having sit ins at the mall
food court because they don't want to wear a mask.
You know, white people have gone crazy. Oh they have,
they absolutely have. Things are not good in the whiteness
right now. And in the land of whiteness, country mu
is still king. White people listen to country music, honey.
(29:04):
So if the if the white people are going crazy
at the mall, they are listening to country music on
the way there, and it's so beautiful. Black woman at
this moment, white nonsense, peak white nonsense, and you're trying
to play country music. They are brave and they're fearless,
and they're good and they're creative and they're amazing and
(29:26):
it was really an honor to talk to him and
uh and write about them. How did this happen out
of nowhere? We just refer to someone with a racial slur. No,
I don't think it was just it just happened. You know.
I was around some of my friends and you know,
we just we stay, we stay dump stuff together. Now,
(29:47):
speaking of sacred places in country music, the Grand Old
Opry and Morgan Wallen and word enthusiasts, I don't think
that anyone expected that there would be continued backlash, but
it like people are still like, no, he's not in
the club again yet. I mean, he's been in the club.
He's been fine. He's been selling millions of albums and
(30:08):
you know, getting the support of all of the people
who are also n word enthusiasts and don't want to
be called out for But what did you think about
bringing Morgan Wallen back on stage at the Opry And
what does that mean to all of these black women
in the business who have been working so hard and
managed to do so without sort of embarrassing themselves on
(30:32):
the idea that you can't be a country music star
or a star period. And listen, Morgan Walland was on
track to become like a star star. I think it's
really important for people to realize right before he gets
drunk and starts shouting at the end word like you know,
he go way back, uh and he don't go way back.
That boy, don't go way back to nowhere. It's not
like he grew up. There's a people who can kind
(30:53):
of borderline get away with. You can see how they
could be confused. You know if you grew up in
the hood and like that, ain't that boy that's a
country redneck boy by his own self identification with a mullet.
Ain't no white boy when no mullet got a pass nowhere. Okay,
So Morgan Walland does not have a pass. He's not
(31:15):
even like black adjacent, and he goes it gets called
getting drunk and doing what like red nicky white boys
do these days. You know, it's cool and radical to
shout out the N word and say all this stuff. Okay,
say all the bad words, and like you know, overnight
because this is you know, during the Black Lives Matter backlash.
(31:35):
He's like a race from country radio and the awards
season and all that. But listen, country fans, those same
white people who are mad and going to the mall
playing country music on the way, they love that boy.
They made that album number one. It's like one of
the best selling albums of last year. But the institutions
of country music had made a call that said they
(31:56):
weren't going to support that kind of thing. Um And listen,
a lot of country music artists are just as conservative
as their audience is, and there have been a lot
of push not just from the fans, but from inside.
You know, the call is coming from inside the house.
So I think it's really interesting that Morgan Wallan wasn't
like officially invited to the opery. He's there as a
(32:16):
guest of an artist who brings him out Right, they're
gonna back and if they're gonna shoot worn And I
think I think it was Jason Aldan wasn't know it
wasn't Jason's old coked up looking behind. I'm sorry, is
that brought him out. I'm actually gonna look out trying
to am't gonna look at it. I can't believe it's
(32:37):
only been somebody and I just don't know him. It's
the problem. I'm not sure. I'm not well so someone
who I thought it was a big country star who
wasn't going to have anything to lose, but apparently not. No,
this is like a phone boy, right, So this artist
Ernest brings him out during his um opery set, and
it's the way. It's a way to like, yeah, to
(32:59):
force him act onto the legitimate country music stage, kind
of shove them down the throat of the industry and
say it's enough. Right, he's been in purgatory enough. A
lot of fans are clamoring for it. The problem is
the Opery, just like the Rieman, just like country music radio,
just like Nashville rit Large, hasn't yet made good on
(33:20):
its promise to the black artist that they made promises
to after Wallin was you know, excommunicated. They're supposed to
be opening up spaces for artists not just to perform,
but to do songwriting, producing like the The artists in Nashville,
probably more than any other place in the country except
(33:41):
for l A, are like working artists. There are people there.
They get up and go to their job as a musician.
So when you're cut out of that, that's just like
labor market district discrimination, not having people in Nashville can
just get up and go to work as a musician.
And so those spaces are supposed to be making those
opportunities that they and they haven't yet. Wilin himself made
(34:02):
promises to donate money and do all this, and somebody
keeps following a penny has left with his team, and
of course none of it has happened, right, So doing
all of the cosmetic lip service is sort of a
thumb in the nose of the whole thing and saying,
you know, kind of how dare you? He's got like
a song out with a rapper, right, He's doing everything
that just consinby piss people off, and he's happy about it,
(34:25):
like he knows what he's doing. He's sort of like
doing those little hand signals at the white exactly on TV.
And you know, he's dog whistling all over the place
to his people while sort of pretending like, look at
me doing the right thing. That's exactly what it is.
He's doing a little okay symbol. He doesn't even have
(34:46):
like the balls to just come out and say funcky'll
you know that would actually be kind of wouldn't mind
because when people show who they are, they show who
they are and then they reap the consequences one way
or another or both ways, and that's fine. Don't pretend
to be something other than what you are. The haircut
already told us who, so you don't need to pretend
(35:08):
to be otherwise because like you groom it, you groom
the mullet, you grow the mullet. You have made a
conscious decision. You're committed to it, so we know what
else you're committed to embrace yourself. It would be rock
and roll of him, actually, if he would just say yeah,
kind of would and frankly, he would just get even
(35:29):
more popular. He may never be able to perform in
sort of the hallowed stages of Nashville ever again, but
he would never want for money, right. He would be
legend among a huge contingent of the country music audience
if he did that, because it would be kind of
punk rock of him. But he doesn't have those balls, right,
he doesn't have the conviction. Again, the man has a mullet.
(35:53):
I mean, the mullet really explains everything. In every direction.
The more we talk about it, the more the mullet
is actually the symbol that matters. Every time I see
a mullet in the wild, I have to say, I mean,
I grew up around a lot of mullets in Omaha,
and also I grew up in the eighties when the
mullet was truly like the hairstyle, and so I, except
(36:14):
for him, I have a fondness every time I see it.
And I've never seen an unkempt mullet. People who have
mullets they like condition their hair, they comb it, they choose,
they keep it neatly trimmed, like they're saying, this is
not accellent. I am choosing to be business on top,
(36:37):
party in the back. Don't you forget it? It is Listen.
It is a bold person who chooses to be a
human chia pet. So like that is already a person
who is not willing to be bowed by social convention.
So yeah, you gotta have a little respect for that. So, yeah,
you know what it is. He hasn't earned the mullet,
that's it, you know what that is it. He's wearing
(37:02):
it because he thinks that makes him like authentic and
sort of down home as shucks. I have a couple
of trucks on some cinder blocks out back. I'm one
of the people. But it's just no, you're maybe not
that's right, and you know you don't come by it honestly.
It's not an honest mullet. I think that's it, you
(37:23):
know what, That's exactly what it is. Morgan Wallen hasn't
earned his mullet. I could talk to you forever and ever.
But as we sort of bring this to a close,
what are your hopes for the new year, if any,
given that we had thought we were getting out of prison,
(37:45):
but not so fast. I hope that on that front,
on the pandemic front, I hope that the rest of
the world could finally get equitable access to their first
round of vaccine before we start handing out like our
fourth around here in the United States. Because of in
the way that Wallin hasn't earned his mullet, we really
(38:06):
haven't earned our scientific advancements because we're not treating them
with respect um and so I hope that for the
rest of the world, I really do. And then I
hope that we get better treatment if it is the
case that we're not going to be able to control
every variant. I hope we get better treatment because until
we do, UM, we're all going to be imprisoned by UM,
(38:28):
this virus UM. Politically, I hope we start to hold
two task very seriously, politicians who have decided to sell
our institutions to the highest bidder M, because that's really
what we're living with right now, institutional atrophy and decay UM.
And this is a moment of pause when we could
(38:50):
really really start to clause some of that back. I
hope for everybody that you get to get outside and
nice weather, just as soon as we are able. Winter
during COVID it has just been the worst. It's not
just that like the diseases out there and everybody's failing you,
but it's cold and you're locked inside unless you're in California,
and I already don't trust you people, but the rest
(39:12):
of us are like suffering. And so I hope spring
comes back around as soon as it can. And then
you know, personally, I'm I decided to commit this year
to only doing passion projects. I'm only working on things
that I'm extremely passionate about. That's the gift I'm giving
myself and I'm really looking forward to unwrapping that gift
(39:32):
this year. Well, trustee, my friend, thank you so much
for joining me on the first episode of this podcast.
So I get all the news alerts you know for
your name, and of course the old standby it will
never not tickle me. Yesterday the news alert was the
Rock Sand Homosexual Agenda launches Google translates. The other day,
(39:55):
I read a great article about Rock Sand Homosexual and
I was like, yes, it will her to will it
will never fail to amuse me. So I am forever
a fan and so grateful I get to be your friend.
Same thank you, and our listeners are going to miss you,
but I know that you're doing exciting things and I
am just so thrilled for you to be doing passion projects.
(40:15):
That is that's the dream. May we all find our
passion projects this year. For all of you listening, you
can keep up with me and the podcast on social media.
You can find me on Twitter at r G A
Y and on Instagram at Roxanne J seven four. Our
email if you want to reach us and share feedback
(40:37):
or just let us know how you're doing, is Roxanne
Gay Agenda at gmail dot com. From Luminary. The Roxane
Gay Podcast is produced by Curtis Fox our interns. Moreno
production support is provided by Kitman Adams. I am Roxanne
Gay or favorite bad feminist. Thank you for listening. The deputed,
(41:00):
The Dict
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