a comedian's take on the whole 'weird' thing

outside the mainstream,

“Weird” doesn’t sound like much. But of all the attacks Democrats have levied against Republicans since Trump came down that escalator, this one appears to hit the hardest. Republican politicians seem taken aback by the idea that they’re outside the mainstream, by the charge that their interests and priorities are alienating to the average American... See more

But this strategy of defense brings to mind the slogan Keep Austin Weird , which has since been repurposed for Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and other formerly groovy towns. These calls are sad because they fail the second they are uttered. When you are forced to demand the preservation of the weird, the shark hath jumped.

This dialectic is muddy from the get-go, of course. It’s a version of the more familiar hipster trap: over time, the marginal labor of the bohemian experimentalist and taste-maker is swallowed up by the smug cartoon of the in-the-know consumer clone. But the near inevitability of this process also suggests that the first hipster was already part of... See more

The Democratic Party of George McGovern was, in this narrative, the party of “acid, amnesty and abortion,” the party of chaos, disruption and overreach. Out of touch with the vast American middle, it had cast its lot with cultural elites and antiwar militants. This Democratic Party, said the Nixon campaign, could not relate to the tens of millions ... See more