#42: Cher should start a newsletter
Death By Consumption
2/18/25 - 2/24/25
Forgive me for sounding like your most boring coworker but: how are we already two months into the year? I guess time really flies when a plane crashes every day. This week, I really spent a lot of time grappling with what the hell is going on lately, so this newsletter is almost all about the written word, baby!
I've got a dispatch on some of the newsletters I consider must-reads (a newsletter about newsletters? Groundbreaking!), as well as three damn books I read this week: one that tries to explain why everyone is insane now, one that's a modern fable about our new authoritarian world and how much those people hate reading, and, most importantly, Cher's memoir. And lastly, stick around for an insane 1976 made-for-TV PBS movie starring Shelley Duvall as a woman who wants to cut her hair, and a weed recommendation. This is a strange week, sorry!
Newsletter corner:
Dinner Party — by Choire Sicha at New York Mag
Choire Sicha, an editor at NYMag, has been writing the weekday newsletter “Dinner Party” for a few months now, and it’s usually one of the last things I read before closing my laptop for the day. (He also — if I can brag about the dumbest thing to ever be bragged about — has followed me on Twitter for like 10 years now, ever since I tweeted my surprise upon finding out that 1. he was a man and 2. his name was not at all pronounced the way I thought it was. Embarrassing!) Non-New Yorkers may not relate to a lot of the regular content, but last week’s was a must-read, as he interviewed Rebecca Traister about her latest column, all about how everyone (but especially Democrats) are eagerly throwing trans people and other minority groups under the bus after Kamala’s loss.
Forgive me for quoting at length, but:
It all goes back to the Clinton years, when they just started poll-testing everything. “How do people feel about this? Do they feel good about it? Then we'll run on it. Do they feel lukewarm about it? Then we're going to be quiet about it.” That totally cedes the possibility that you could shape opinion as a political party. You could shape how your voters see themselves and see you by actually getting out in front of stuff. No. For decades, the Democratic Party has done the opposite. The Republican Party, in contrast, has never met an unpopular issue that it doesn't want to lead with. … I don't know how authentic it is for all of them … They do it for a couple reasons. One, money. Two, what they are showing their base is that they will fight like fuck for everything. They are showing commitment. They are showing passion. Whereas Dems are like, “We could be this way or we could be that way, which way do you like better?” Like the eyeglasses guy who puts in the little lenses — “Better like this, or better like this?” That's how the Democrats do leadership.
The whole interview was great, but I sadly doubt Chuck Schumer subscribes to Choire’s newsletter. If only!
Garbage Day — by Ryan Broderick
Garbage Day started as a newsletter explaining all the strange madnesses of the internet, but in the age of Trump and Elon has quickly become one of the best newsletters at explaining why we’re all trapped in hell together. Ryan Broderick is great at explaining extremely niche and confusing internet subcultures to normies, and he was one of the first major writers to focus on the fact that the internet and the “real world” are not separate things anymore. Like this post from last week, which uses the psychotic ASMR video of immigrants being deported that was put out by the White House (!) as a jumping-off point to talk about how thoroughly the right wing controls culture now:
At some point between 2019-2021, the internet conquered mainstream media, viral content replaced traditional corporate entertainment, and Republicans have first mover’s advantage. This is their victory lap after all the shameless years they spent posting Pepe the Frog memes and setting up YouTube channels to brainwash children. But I am surprised by how thoroughly the Democrats and, more generally, leftists and liberals have ceded internet culture, as a whole, to the right. Every meme, every format, every platform is fertile ground for an adversarial regime that knows how to spin them into cheap and easy propaganda and there is no line they aren’t willing to cross.
This recent post was also a good, sobering read, on why Trump won and how he is ruling by acting essentially as an influencer, and how Democrats need to start thinking similarly if they want to beat him. (Or we could just get rid of the internet completely? Seems easier at this point.)
Read Max — by Max Read
Read Max is my favorite Dad Culture newsletter — he frequently recommends 90s thrillers and spy novels — and in between, he writes very well-thought-out and helpful summarizations on whatever the hell is going on with the right, or AI, or crypto, and the horrors that ensue when all those things combine. Like this dispatch on what he's calling the "soy right," which seeks to explain why the right, who are getting everything they've ever wanted are still the whiniest and most fragile motherfuckers on the planet:
To me the other key aspect of the Soy Right psychological profile, beyond its desperate need for approval and respect, is a childlike refusal of agency and responsibility, even while in power. A 20-something with access to Treasury Department systems is a “kid” whose racism shouldn’t be disqualifying. The South African billionaire throwing Nazi salutes is a enthusiastic neuroatyptical man who needs our sympathy. The Vice President of the United States would never have attracted the attention of the Pope if it weren’t for “hysteric progressives,” the real villains. Silicon Valley oligarchs were “driven into Trump’s arms” by the perfidy of Democrats. No one in the Soy Right makes affirmative choices; they’re smol beans who need protection and care.
Gossip Time — by Allie Jones
After I've overdosed on content about How Bad Everything Is, there's Gossip Time, former Gawker writer Allie Jones's regular dispatches from the celeb gossip world. Do I need to know what's going on every week with Hilary Duff? I didn't think so, but turns out I do!
Look, there are very bad things and very important things happening right now, but I think we should all reserve some mental energy for keeping updated on Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco's whole weird thing. And we absolutely need to deal with the fact that Meghan Markle used "#lovewins" on her Valentine's Day post about Prince Harry.
Hung Up — by Hunter Harris
Hung Up is always a good time, with regular thoughts from Hunter on the latest season of Love Is Blind, updates on whatever madness J.Lo's up to, or for very helpful deep dives, like this essential explainer on Karla Sofia Gascon's legendary Oscar campaign. After gorging on bleak updates on the collapse of civilization, it's very nice to get a quick little look into Club Chalamet's latest manic tweet spiral. At least I'm not that bad yet.
Non-Newsletter Corner:
Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976) — on Criterion
This PBS short film based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story is only about 45 minutes long, and unbelievably funny. It stars Shelley Duvall as a shy country girl in the 1920s who goes to stay with her flapper cousin, and learns how to be a flapper herself, which largely entails saying scandalous things to men and considering getting a bob. The tone of the film is, essentially, insane, with everyone acting unbearably prim — all the men are dandy fops, swishing their hips and saying things like, "Noisy crowded dance floors are my pet abomination," as an attempt at flirting. Meanwhile, the women are "loose" in the 1920s sense, which basically means they do cartwheels at a party ("I'd be mortified if she started turning cartwheels in my home!" is the horrified reaction of Harold and Maude's Bud Cort).
Shelley Duvall is, as always, captivatingly strange, and absolutely perfect as she slowly transforms from this stiff and meek woman to a wild flapper who is nervously considering bobbing her hair. "I want to be a society vampire, and I don't see how I can unless I have my hair bobbed. Do you?" she declares at a dinner party. And, really, who hasn't experienced this level of drama as they considered a new hairstyle? For a 1976 film making fun of 1920s culture, there's a universal truth here: when you feel stuck in life, sometimes the best thing to do is to say fuck it, and bob your hair.
Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein (2023) — paperback
This should have been mandatory reading before the election, but it'll have to do now that we're fully in the Mirror World, as Naomi Klein calls the swirling mess of paranoia, conspiracies, lies, and sheer insanity peddled daily by the right. Naomi Klein uses the fact that she's frequently confused with noted insane woman Naomi Wolf as a way to dive into the right-wing world that mostly orbits Steve Bannon and, boy, is it a trip. This is not a feel-good read, but it's also not necessarily a feel-bad read, as she is able to cut through so much bullshit and explain the logic behind all the illogic we're all living under now.
After months of listening to Bannon, I can say this with great certainty: While most of us who oppose his political project choose not to see him, he is watching us closely. The issues we are abandoning, the debates we aren't having, the people we are insulting and discarding. He is watching all of it, and he is stitching together a political agenda out of it, a warped mirror agenda that he is convinced is the ticket to the next wave of electoral victories — it's an agenda too few on our side of the glass have tried to comprehend. Bannon calls it "MAGA Plus" — a supersizing, as he sees it, of Trump's original "Make America Great Again" coalition, and it's rapidly being picked up and adopted outside the United States as well.
Can someone get this book into Hakeem Jeffries' hands, maybe? It might help!
Cher: The Memoir, Part 1, by Cher (2024) — hardcover
Just a great, chatty, breezy memoir. And I normally hate celebrity memoirs! But Cher, as always, is different. You come to this book for the incredible stories (like an orgy/dinner party hosted by Salvador Dalí, which she attends with Sonny and Francis Ford Coppola and results in the three of them pissing off Dalí), but what got me is how vulnerable she comes across. Cher needs words of affirmation, too! She goes deep on her relationship with Sonny and doesn't let him off the hook, but she's not cruel or unfair to him. He was very controlling and jealous, but also, clearly, the most important partner she ever had, and their relationship after the divorce is so much more interesting (and funnier!) than any stories from their actual marriage:
While waiting for his divorce, Sonny started seeing several women simultaneously, including one who claimed she was pregnant with his child, took his money for an abortion (along with that of two other men to whom she made the same claim), and flew to Hawaii to get her teeth fixed instead. That chick was so smart. She got a suntan and her teeth fixed all on their dime.
But really, no one name-drops like Cher. She tells a slightly horrifying but weirdly charming (so: very 60s) story of going on a couple dates with Warren Beatty when she was 15 and he was 25. Obviously that's gross, but damnit if Warren can't still charm you even in the midst of being a pedophile: “The last time he called, I was with Sonny. He said, ‘Do you want to go to dinner?’ I said, ‘Well, I have a boyfriend.’ He said, ‘Okay, do you want to go to lunch?’”
My favorite story in the book, though, was from seemingly just a casual Sunday for Cher. She went to Dan Tana's in LA for lunch and ran into Harry Nilsson and John Lennon, who were drinking at the bar, and begged her to get them into the Playboy Mansion (why John Lennon had to beg anyone for an invite is never explained, although maybe the story that follows is explanation enough). Cher drives them to the mansion, where Hugh is having a movie night, which is quickly ruined by Nilsson and Lennon being too drunk and annoying. So Cher takes them out of movie night and deposits them in the famous Playboy Mansion grotto, and goes off to find them a drink. When she comes back, they're both naked in the water, and she tells them, “Guys, do not come out. This is not pretty what I’m seeing. Please do not come out.” By the end of the book, we've barely gotten into the 1970s, so I expect part two to be around 2,000 pages.
The Book Censor's Library, by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (2024) — library ebook
This is a strange, short book that I tore through over a couple of subway rides and mostly enjoyed, though I found it a bit obvious. Set in a future where imagination is banned (lol), it follows a book censor, whose job is to read books in search of anything controversial (which is, basically, anything that doesn't just say nice things about the President and about religion), and to ban them. From there, he gets caught up in a conspiracy to bring back literacy (lol) and to save his daughter, who is refusing to let the government kill her imagination (lol). It's all a bit... un-subtle (not only are there frequent references to "going down the rabbit hole" but there are literal white rabbits to follow!), but it largely works as a parable about how Bad Things Are Now, even if the overall message is a bit fluffy. Books are dangerous, but maybe not this one.
Black Cherry Weed Seltzer — by Ayrloom
When I have a friend’s house party to attend and I don’t want to drink, but I still want to float away from reality at least a little, I love to bring a can or two of this weed seltzer to slowly sip on throughout the length of the party. Each can is 5mg of THC with 10mg of CBD, so you feel more relaxed than psychotic. And since you sip it slowly, the high comes on gradually, as if you slowly slipped into a bathtub over the course of 1-2 hours. Rather than an edible, which hits you all at once — for better or worse — the weed only kicks in as fast as you drank it, so often I only realize I’m actually pretty stoned by the time I’m on the subway platform and already going home. Which means by the time I’m home I’m all snuggly and ready for bed. My apologies if you live in a heartless red state that won’t allow legal weed, but I’ve also heard good things about the Cann Roadies that you can just mix with water, and those you can order to your state online. (Sorry if you're not in America, but also congrats on not being in America.)