The return of the U.S.'s oldest drag king

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NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

For decades now, drag queens have captured the national imagination. Drag kings, on the other hand, have been relegated to a less prominent position in pop culture. But today on the show, we're telling the story of one Elsie Saldaña — aka El Daña. As someone who started performing in drag in 1965, she's now considered one of the oldest drag kings still performing in the U.S. Over the course of her long performance career, many forces have converged that could have stopped her from taking to the stage. But today, almost 60 years after her debut, she hasn't stopped yet.

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0:00.0	China increasingly targets its critics overseas.
0:03.6	Last summer the family of a Chinese dissident was accused of making bomb threats
0:08.5	they said they had nothing to do with.
0:10.3	I think the Chinese government is treating us so badly to show its power.
0:16.0	But wasn't the Communist Party.
0:18.0	We unravel the mystery on the latest episode of the Sunday story on NPR's Up First Podcast.
0:25.0	What's good, y'all. This is Jean. Just popping in here for a quick second to let you know that we know that there was some,
0:31.0	I don't know if you heard, like medium sized news over the weekend so the
0:35.4	2024 presidential race kind of blew up when President Biden removed himself
0:39.3	from their race and in the day since he and a lot of other high-profile
0:43.9	Democrats have thrown their support behind Vice President Kamla Harris. And so
0:47.8	now Vice President Harris has the backing of players in DC like the
0:51.1	Congressional Black Caucus and Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff and
0:54.8	most of the squad.
0:57.7	And she also has enough party delegates pledged to her to be the party's official nominee.
1:03.0	But, but, Vice President Harris has also kept a notoriously low profile
1:08.0	over the past four years or so.
1:10.0	She also hasn't pulled that well
1:12.0	when she didn't keep keeping the little profile.
1:13.3	And so we felt it might be worth a little reminder just for us to take some time, all of us,
1:19.7	to look into who she was, what she's represented in the past,
1:23.0	and to think about what she would bring to the presidency.
	...

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