Responses and Predictions
And Pumpkin Spice Luigi
I recorded my response to the responses I got from last week’s newsletter. Check it out, let me know what you think, and let’s feedback and forth forever!
Welcome to Mess & Noise. Last edition was a dispatch from the suburbs with some anti-intentions (antentions?) for the new year. If you’re new here, I also write about being a working parent , grief, and sandwiches. Paid subscriptions are paused until February.
Predictions!
I’m terrible at predictions and you’ve probably heard enough of them the last few weeks but why should that stop me? Here’s my future zeitgeist report:
1. Pumpkin Spice Mangione
Betches Love Luigi, and there are few things our culture hates more than women enjoying themselves. I predict the Pumpkin Spice Latte-fication of Luigi Mangione. Whatever class consciousness and solidarity the alleged assassin inspired early in his media storm will be negated by the neverending gender war made salient in this last election.
LM’s appeal will be reduced to his looks, his popularity attributed to silly giggling girls, and like his arraignment, the gendered turnout for his trial will be the over-reported basis for his backlash.
Diners will start disappearing
Sara Eckel had a similar prediction and it breaks my heart.
New York restaurants are cool and all but my favorite places to eat have vinyl booths and big floppy menus with everything from quesadillas to tuna melts. A good, independently owned diner is the most neighborhoody, family friendly, community experience you can find in an increasingly corporatized/flattened city. It’s akin to church.
I ate at Windsor Café (that’s a misnomer, it’s a diner through and through) this past Sunday and marveled at the true cross section of Brooklyn among its tables: old people, young people, normie families (hi), queer couples, queer couples with kids, old schoolers with thick accents, and obvious transplants. Friendly staff (all immigrants) affordable food, decidedly un-hip, no wait for a table. Then I was seized by an awful premonition of the space becoming a Tend office or a Chase branch.
With big business winning everything now, it pains me to predict the vultures in real estate and private equity will run rampant through Brooklyn, launching new investor- backed experiences, and turning the best parts of the borough into another Williamsburg. I just wanna eat pancakes from a guy named Cesar!
The next feminist movement will be a labor movement
I’m reading from my own book on this one but hear me out: In the 80s and 90s feminism became more about identity and acknowledgement than public policy or a national agenda. Abortion was always a central issue, but since Roe wasn’t codified during nearly a decade of Democratic trifectas under Clinton, Obama, and Biden, it’s not too cynical to say reproductive rights have been used as a carrot/stick strategy the Dems could lean on to whip up anger and win national elections.
It didn’t work this time. And after decades of feminism widening its scope and losing its focus so far that it stands for nothing, all while fracturing on the inside with warring identities, the current enthusiasm for a women’s movement is gone.
A new Gilded Age/Broligarchy is being ushered in and the Girlboss has been dead in the ground for years. Instead of trying to play Capitalism like men and losing, women should realign with a revitalized labor movement. I predict (wish) that labor will be feminism’s new (but old) defining underpin.
All women work, whether it’s in the home or a traditional career, whether we’re moms or childless pet people, and a movement that prioritizes women’s labor protections and economic security/advancement at a policy level might have more impact than like, pussy hats and Beyoncé songs.
Links I mentioned in the recording
If you listened, here’s the stuff I mentioned:
The last podcast about Teddy Roosevelt I did
Otherworld, the podcast about regular people’s paranormal experiences
Bitchin’ Camaro by The Dead Milkmen
And a big Yo! to new subscribers
Hello and thank yous to new subs Rebecca A., Julia D., Keren A., Maddy G., The Auraist, Erin S., Marcela S., Christine D., Jordan N., Lorissa R., Jarmon, Ananta N., and Emily A.
This one ends here. Thanks for reading!
Your observations are genuinely profound!