Okay, one of you is going to know the answer to this story problem: Anthony Weiner tweeted his wiener, accidentally, to all of Twitter, which means it is now in the Library of Congress, where Twitter archives all our tweets.
Is this the first political penis in the Library of Congress?
The Butcher and I say “no.” I’m betting on Thomas Jefferson having an architectural rendering of his penis among the items he sold to the Library. The Butcher says he’s putting his money on, and I quote, “that pervert, Benjamin Franklin.” (Please note, the Butcher said “that pervert” with an air of jealous appreciation for the man’s talent and not any slut-shaming.)
To his credit, Sen. Campfield has managed to stand proud as a single man among a family-obsessed constituency. Like it or not, there is no question that he is a bit of a maverick standing by his convictions.
I’m sorry, Out & About, but I’m going to need a little bit more here. How is not being married standing by your convictions? What convictions does Campfield have that have lead him to reject marriage? Is it difficult to not be married in our society? And by that, I mean, ‘married’ as a verb. Yes, there are a lot of pressures on single folks to get married, but it’s not like, when you hit 35, if you’re still not married, you get handed a bride or groom (depending on which one you need) and you’re forced to walk down the aisle. All that happens is that your parents tell you that you’d better get married soon because you’re starting to sound like an old maid on Facebook.
Are people in Knoxville more family-obsessed than other places? What does “family-obsessed” even mean? Are Campfield’s constituents trying to force him to get married?
How, exactly, does not being married mean that one is a maverick?
I need to know this crap so that I have something to say at family get-togethers. “Betsy, why aren’t you getting married? Do you want to be a weird old maid too fat for love?” “Actually, family, I am a proud, maverick with anti-family-obsessed convictions.” “Um… I don’t know what that means.” “Yeah, me neither, but apparently it works for Stacey Campfield.”
If you want to write a country song that gets on the radio right now, the easiest path seems to be one of those The List songs. Now, The List song in country music has a long and illustrious history. There’s the The Old Guys List where once or twice a generation, someone gets depressed about how much country music these days sucks and decides that singing a song that name-checks Johnny Cash or Hank Williams will somehow make their song not suck. Rarely, very rarely does this work. And who are you going to name-check now? “Oh, I long for the good old days when we all listened to Garth?”
You see the problem? Garth, love him or hate him, does not hearken back to country history. He’s pretty much the start of “let’s sound like 70s rock.” I think you could name-check George Strait, but he’s still kicking around. I don’t think he’s going to be happy to be put in the category of “People we used to listen to and to whom we should still show respect.” I’m sure fucking George Strait is all “Hey, people still listen to me. A lot of people. Don’t be shipping me off to the old folks’ home yet, when my songs are still higher than yours on the charts.”
So, then there’s the other The List song. In this The List song, it’s all about how we are so country, y’all. And then it lists all the ways we’re so downhome and country. Like the Naming of our Ancestors list song, there are some, a very few, actual good songs in this sub-category–“Redneck Woman” for one. But in general, if you turn on a country music station today, you will be inundated with 30 minutes of every hour being terrible “We’re so country, y’all” list songs.
And among those, you may hear a different song. A song that goes “Some day I’ll be living in a big ole city.”
God bless you, Taylor Swift. God bless you. Possibly this would not be as good a song if there weren’t so many “we’re so country, y’all” list songs out right now. But there are, so this is.
If I die mysteriously in the next couple of days, please pass along to detectives that I stupidly fiddled with my foxglove (sadly not a euphemism) and then stuck my hand in my mouth when I became convinced there was a bug in it. And then, I have been eating off of the dirty dishes in the dishwasher all weekend because the Butcher rinses things before putting them in there and so I didn’t know they were still dirty.
Tiny Cat Pants 