Hear Me Out: Pop Stars Run Politics Now

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Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out: who runs the world? Kamala Harris is having a brat summer, which means that you’re likely seeing lots of questions about what brat summer is and why anyone cares. But the meme being co-opted by the Harris campaign is just a small piece of the bigger puzzle. Writer and podcast host H. Alan Scott joins Hear Me Out to argue that pop stars have a huge amount of political influence — that, coupled with “cool factor,” could swing the election. If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: [email protected] Podcast production by Maura Currie. Want more Hear Me Out? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/hearmeoutplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Here Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. Who runs the world? And it's not just girls. Is it pop stars, actually? If you've been on social media or watching any cable news, you have probably seen a lot of people explaining
0:16.4	Brat Summer and that Vice President Kamala Harris is having one of those.
0:22.0	You've probably also seen some really intense speculation
0:26.3	about whether Beyoncé allowing the Harris campaign to use her song
0:29.8	Freedom is an endorsement or is it not about if and when Taylor Swift will speak up and
0:35.5	endorse Kamala Harris.
0:37.4	People are always going to talk about celebrities and pop culture moments and memes.
0:41.8	That's kind of the point of the whole thing. But does the future of our democracy
0:45.9	maybe rest in the well manicured hands of pop stars? They are not just a celebrity. They're not just a celebrity.
0:52.5	They're not just a big celebrity supporter of a politician.
0:56.3	They are a movement, a brand, an identity that actually impacts a large group of people.
1:03.2	H.L. and Scott joins Hear Me Out once again in just a moment.
1:06.3	Stay with us.
1:08.3	Welcome back to Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley.
1:14.0	The Brat Green, what does it represent?
1:17.0	I think there's this kind of idea of like making something like quite disgusting
1:21.0	and turning it into this thing that you know people are going to look at quite a lot and think about and ask you know why is it so crap like I really enjoyed that some people like absolutely hated it and some people were writing these kind of like essays on you know why it was good and obviously that was you know the point of the whole thing.
1:48.8	That was pop singer and DJ Charlie X C X describing the cover of her new album Brat.
1:55.4	That's before it became political iconography though. That's happened in the last week or so because when Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, her campaign's
2:00.0	social presence immediately leaned into the pop culture aesthetic and the moment that is
2:07.0	brat. It's a very mime start to an already unconventional campaign, but it also has the blessing of
2:13.8	Charlie X.C. X herself who a few days ago tweeted to her 3.6 million followers
	...

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