what if outrage were a finite resource?
on sydney sweeney, august, etc
Welcome back to Hmm, everyone. I’m starting to get back into a nice cadence/routine with regard to publishing and it feels nice. Like, ah, yes, so I can be a responsible adult after all.
Before we get into today’s More Serious Topic, here are a few photos from the weekend; I visited my friend in New York and had the best time, although it was a bit of a plot twist to realize that a place I love that was home for eight years, give or take, no longer felt the same way.
Okay. Sorry, I know I don’t usually do the blogger catch-up thing, but for some reason it felt right to do so today. Moving on, though.
For a few days there, I kept starting—or wanting to start—or thinking I wanted to start—a newsletter about the Sydney Sweeney of it all (her of the blue (gene)(jean)s, registered Republican status1, that Hey Dude partnership??, and the rush she seems to be in to make a quick buck on the back of increasingly unsubtle right-leaning messages vis-à-vis her perceived All-American Looks™), but I'm tired even writing that parenthetical. And I'm a girl who loves nothing more than a good parenthetical! They're my bread and butter!
So you can imagine, is what I'm trying to say, my reluctance to wade into this already-tired discourse. And now, luckily, it's too late. Which tells me that maybe, it was never worth discussing in the first place.
Maybe, if I may, it's—other than the rampant authoritarianism intruding upon every facet of our lives—the August of it all.
Stay with me.
Last October on my way to Spain I stopped by Ireland for a few days and did one of those day tours to a couple of Dublin's surrounding towns. I was on a bus for a mind-numbing number of hours. Really, more hours than I’d expected, given my penchant for carsickness. But anyway, on this tour, I inevitably ran into a fellow solo traveler who was inevitably Australian, and after inquiring upon my occupation, he very nicely spent some of our travel time reading the newsletter. (Michael, if you're still subscribed and reading this, hi!) When we reached our next stop and met up on solid ground once again, the first words out of his mouth were: "so what happened in August?"
Reader, nothing had happened in August. I mean, to be fair, I was writing headlines like these:
... So I do get where he was coming from, in a way. But nothing of particular consequence had happened in the eighth month of 2024.
Not really, at least. Nothing specific. I just think that in August, much like in February, people gradually2 lose their marbles. Waiting for autumn, much like waiting for spring, at some point starts feeling like a sort of personal challenge. A countdown, even. Like, okay, I just have to make it to March/September, and everything will be fine; just a few more weeks and then a new season will begin. In the new season I can make myself anew. Better yet: I will no longer freeze/scorch to death every time I leave the house.
Does that kind of thinking not take a toll on a person? I think it does. Existing in what feels like a transitional stage/space/time is not, I fear, the most stable way to live. It tears at people. And more relevantly to today’s discussion, I find it makes us cling to non-issues, matters that under most circumstances would be but very passing fancies over the course of like, an E! Entertainment segment. Matters, with all due respect, like Sydney Sweeney and her political/ideological affiliations.
Now, I do think the American Eagle ad was a dog whistle. To be clear. Like, the first few times it showed up on my feed I watched it without audio and was like what's the big deal here it's not like Sydney Sweeney hasn't been doing a million and one ads like a woman beset by a mountain of immovable debt and then I finally sighed and pressed the little volume button and I was like ohhhhh ok yes I see, this has a touch of the deeply sinister about it. So I'm not arguing otherwise. The ad is, at best, very fucking weird.
But to be honest, I haven't stepped foot in American Eagle and its denim-clad walls since Obama was president and Going to the Mall was a thing to do with my fellow underageds. So to formally opine on it feels, maybe ... puerile? Saying "we need to talk about American Eagle" feels like a joke I might make if I were running out of material. Like something I would do if I were still in high school. And even though I'm writing this from the same Panera I frequented in 2008, sitting in a booth where many a cinnamon crunch bagel was consumed, I haven't been a high school student in years. AP Calculus can't hurt me anymore.3
But that's the way it goes sometimes, no? I come into possession of what feels like the aftershock of an opinion, something from a past life, that screams to be shared. And I have to sit with said opinion for a second, wondering if it comes from past Clara or current Clara and if the former, then the question becomes: is it worth spending the time to recalibrate it into a coherent argument worthy of the here and now? Sometimes it is! Sometimes you think: oh, my younger self had some interesting thoughts, let me honor that. Other times, though ... like, this was the same girl who idolized Hillary Clinton and thought peplum tops from Modcloth looked cute. She made mistakes. It's fine to acknowledge that, however begrudgingly.
So, yeah—shitty ad. Ultimately, though: irrelevant. A distraction. I don't really care to live in a world where more people worry about a poorly written American Eagle ad than about Israel's systemic and U.S.-funded starvation, destruction, and invasion of Palestine, or about RFK Jr.'s HHS winding down funding for mRNA vaccine development, or about Defense Secretary Pete Hagseth’s seeming endorsement of a group of Christian nationalist pastors' belief that women shouldn't vote and that the country at large should follow the patriarchal values they (mistakenly) consider to be Christian, or about Trump deploying the National Guard in the capital and taking over D.C.’s police force. These seem, to me, respectfully, issues worthier of our time and concern.
Because unfortunately, I don’t think we’re capable of caring equally about it all.
It’s not that I don’t like gossip or pop culture because of course I do—this newsletter would likely not exist without it! But the differing levels of engagement and awareness between the subjects … at a time like this … it’s a bit devastating to me! Sydney Sweeney and her ilk are not the ones making the policy decisions that should be occuppying our time and making us all mad.
Like, I get it. It's more fun to be angry over a jeans advert than over the impending creep of fascism, and, to an extent, the two are interconnected. Of course they are. I understand that. But man … I’m thinking we really should learn to prioritize our outrage. It's a bit of a finite resource. Maybe it’s time to spend it accordingly.
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In Florida lol. Registering as a Republican in Florida in 2024 is such a wild little move.
Calc AB, for those who were going to ask. You knew this, though. Imagine me taking Calc BC … that poor scantron would never have recovered.
IMO August is the Sunday night of the calendar year. It’s hard to enjoy because what comes NEXT is so ever present.
I love how, even though I'm easily two generations older than you, I always align with your thoughts on so many things. Maybe it's because I first stumbled on you via your PR videos and laughed myself silly for an hour (I was in that field myself and ev-er-y-thing resonated). Anyway cheers and onto ... whatever's gonna happen next.