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Okay, maybe not you. But people. Things. Trends. Phrases. Repeating enough times to get my attention.
Probably I've just been more sensitive to it on account of being sick. Fortunately, the bug seems to be mostly past now. The workweek ended well, if busy with a boatload of appointments all backed up at the end of the day yesterday. It's the weekend now, though, which gives me the chance to recover from all that and rant about the things that seem to be under everybody elses' skin except mine.
Three for now. More may arise later:
* "Nepo babies."
There's nothing new here except the term. At least since "Little Ricky" was birthed on network television in 1953, the children of celebrities have been covered, and their future paths lit up if not paved for them. Yet it took until last year for a Canadian "influencer" of lesser birth to coin the term that is now all over and dragging these kids, and in some cases their own kids, right under. The term arose just about a year ago after she watched Judd Apatow's kid in an episode of something called Euphoria:
Like many zoomers, Derradji watched Euphoria and absorbed everything about it online. She wasn’t a particular fan of Maude Apatow’s character (“Her acting wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything special”), and when she discovered both of the actress’s parents had Wikipedia entries of their own, she fired off a tweet: “Wait I just found out that the actress that plays Lexi is a nepotism baby omg 😭 her mom is Leslie Mann and her dad is a movie director lol.”
Her tweet received more than 4,000 likes, but the more important figure was the 2,500-plus quote tweets, mostly from millennials and Gen-Xers incredulous that someone had gotten to Judd Apatow through Maude Apatow. Prompted by the hubbub, major publications wrote explainers on the subject of nepo babies, and soon no celebrity child could do press without getting grilled on their parentage. To Derradji’s critics, few of whom were aware that she had been a child living in North Africa during Apatow’s heyday, she was emblematic of Gen Z’s naïveté. (In turn, the anger her tweet stirred up was partly attributable to older generations’ discomfort with their own cultural irrelevance.) The pot-stirrer in her couldn’t help but be a little proud. If you called out a nepo baby online, they might be forced to respond. “Whatever you say could get the attention of those nepotism kids, get a reaction out of them,” she says.
Apparently it worked, because I'm now seeing and hearing refererences to "nepo babies" almost every day. Also apparently, it's fine to judge these kids, not for what they do or say but for what their DNA is. Isn't that a little bit racist? As in, micro-racist? Besides, who knows? Maybe performance talent is in the DNA to some extent. I have followed the music of numerous kids of famous musicians- Jen Chapin, Zack Starkey, Jakob Dylan, AJ Croce- who have immense talent in their own rights. A friend of mine just saw AJ in concert in the southwest, on a tour where he's performing his father Jim's music after avoiding it for much of his own musical career just because of the negative associations from this other n-word. This video of the closing number of his dad's final #1 single, "Time in a Bottle", shows how generations can connect.
Sure, these kids have doors opened for them. Some of them were closet doors- with clothes on forbidden wire hangers. Way more than the national average opened their parents' medicine cabinet doors- with drugs in them. Any celebrity kid who survives the extra spotlight from cradle to stalky paparazzis to being constantly questioned about their bona fides- and is good enough to keep my attention in a three-minute song or two-hour film? Good on them. Especially those like AJ Croce and Jen Chapin and Sean Lennon and Annie Nillson, all of whom lost a performing parent way too soon and way too tragically.
----
* Ragging on Steely Dan.
This is another one that seems all the rage all of a sudden, and I can't figure out the raginess or the suddenness. Yet it's coming from friends on Facebook, from respected musicians like Jason Isbell, and even from my snarky weather app:
I don't even have a steely dog in this fight, really. We don't own a single album of theirs now, I think I only ever had Aja in vinyl, and I remember a college roommate letting out peals of derision when an Ithaca radio station put them on a pedestal as being "thinking man's rock and roll." But come on, man; they've been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for two decades, we do own a CD of Donald Fagen's side project New York Rock And Soul Revue that is amazing, and there's no questioning their musicianship. Not to mention, why all this after Walter Becker freakin DIED?
I did not think these haters could be so cruel.
----
* Not picking up the trash.
I can be just as easily annoyed by people being too nice as I am by the ones above who clearly aren't. After the President's mostly positive State of the Union speech earlier this week, memes started showing up featuring the vehement opposition by everybody's favorite Jewish Space Ranger, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Whackjobistan). This one's pretty typical:
That got her an instant memefication on MSNBC of looking like "Tonya Harding in a fur coat." Then former Clinton guru James Carville went on the network and dropped a "white trash" label on her.
Pearls were promptly clutched, and not just by the usual Fox News gang. Above-it-all liberals called out Carville and the commentators for the classism of demeaning poor people of any stripe and for demonizing that poor misunderstood figure skater.
(Sorry, can't find one for her new show yet....)
Remember my litmus test above for judging the judgers of the nepo babies? They do it
not for what they do or say but for what their DNA is.
By that standard, Marge isn't judged for her innate state of being but for what she DOES do and what she DOES say. Once you cross that line, anything is fair game, far as I'm concerned.
Especially if you show up at the State of the Union and think it's a Cruella deVil Lookalike Contest.
----
This concludes the reading of the rant. It's over now, drink your big black cow and get out of here....
Probably I've just been more sensitive to it on account of being sick. Fortunately, the bug seems to be mostly past now. The workweek ended well, if busy with a boatload of appointments all backed up at the end of the day yesterday. It's the weekend now, though, which gives me the chance to recover from all that and rant about the things that seem to be under everybody elses' skin except mine.
Three for now. More may arise later:
* "Nepo babies."
There's nothing new here except the term. At least since "Little Ricky" was birthed on network television in 1953, the children of celebrities have been covered, and their future paths lit up if not paved for them. Yet it took until last year for a Canadian "influencer" of lesser birth to coin the term that is now all over and dragging these kids, and in some cases their own kids, right under. The term arose just about a year ago after she watched Judd Apatow's kid in an episode of something called Euphoria:
Like many zoomers, Derradji watched Euphoria and absorbed everything about it online. She wasn’t a particular fan of Maude Apatow’s character (“Her acting wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything special”), and when she discovered both of the actress’s parents had Wikipedia entries of their own, she fired off a tweet: “Wait I just found out that the actress that plays Lexi is a nepotism baby omg 😭 her mom is Leslie Mann and her dad is a movie director lol.”
Her tweet received more than 4,000 likes, but the more important figure was the 2,500-plus quote tweets, mostly from millennials and Gen-Xers incredulous that someone had gotten to Judd Apatow through Maude Apatow. Prompted by the hubbub, major publications wrote explainers on the subject of nepo babies, and soon no celebrity child could do press without getting grilled on their parentage. To Derradji’s critics, few of whom were aware that she had been a child living in North Africa during Apatow’s heyday, she was emblematic of Gen Z’s naïveté. (In turn, the anger her tweet stirred up was partly attributable to older generations’ discomfort with their own cultural irrelevance.) The pot-stirrer in her couldn’t help but be a little proud. If you called out a nepo baby online, they might be forced to respond. “Whatever you say could get the attention of those nepotism kids, get a reaction out of them,” she says.
Apparently it worked, because I'm now seeing and hearing refererences to "nepo babies" almost every day. Also apparently, it's fine to judge these kids, not for what they do or say but for what their DNA is. Isn't that a little bit racist? As in, micro-racist? Besides, who knows? Maybe performance talent is in the DNA to some extent. I have followed the music of numerous kids of famous musicians- Jen Chapin, Zack Starkey, Jakob Dylan, AJ Croce- who have immense talent in their own rights. A friend of mine just saw AJ in concert in the southwest, on a tour where he's performing his father Jim's music after avoiding it for much of his own musical career just because of the negative associations from this other n-word. This video of the closing number of his dad's final #1 single, "Time in a Bottle", shows how generations can connect.
Sure, these kids have doors opened for them. Some of them were closet doors- with clothes on forbidden wire hangers. Way more than the national average opened their parents' medicine cabinet doors- with drugs in them. Any celebrity kid who survives the extra spotlight from cradle to stalky paparazzis to being constantly questioned about their bona fides- and is good enough to keep my attention in a three-minute song or two-hour film? Good on them. Especially those like AJ Croce and Jen Chapin and Sean Lennon and Annie Nillson, all of whom lost a performing parent way too soon and way too tragically.
----
* Ragging on Steely Dan.
This is another one that seems all the rage all of a sudden, and I can't figure out the raginess or the suddenness. Yet it's coming from friends on Facebook, from respected musicians like Jason Isbell, and even from my snarky weather app:
I don't even have a steely dog in this fight, really. We don't own a single album of theirs now, I think I only ever had Aja in vinyl, and I remember a college roommate letting out peals of derision when an Ithaca radio station put them on a pedestal as being "thinking man's rock and roll." But come on, man; they've been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for two decades, we do own a CD of Donald Fagen's side project New York Rock And Soul Revue that is amazing, and there's no questioning their musicianship. Not to mention, why all this after Walter Becker freakin DIED?
I did not think these haters could be so cruel.
----
* Not picking up the trash.
I can be just as easily annoyed by people being too nice as I am by the ones above who clearly aren't. After the President's mostly positive State of the Union speech earlier this week, memes started showing up featuring the vehement opposition by everybody's favorite Jewish Space Ranger, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Whackjobistan). This one's pretty typical:
That got her an instant memefication on MSNBC of looking like "Tonya Harding in a fur coat." Then former Clinton guru James Carville went on the network and dropped a "white trash" label on her.
Pearls were promptly clutched, and not just by the usual Fox News gang. Above-it-all liberals called out Carville and the commentators for the classism of demeaning poor people of any stripe and for demonizing that poor misunderstood figure skater.
(Sorry, can't find one for her new show yet....)
Remember my litmus test above for judging the judgers of the nepo babies? They do it
not for what they do or say but for what their DNA is.
By that standard, Marge isn't judged for her innate state of being but for what she DOES do and what she DOES say. Once you cross that line, anything is fair game, far as I'm concerned.
Especially if you show up at the State of the Union and think it's a Cruella deVil Lookalike Contest.
----
This concludes the reading of the rant. It's over now, drink your big black cow and get out of here....