Helen Andrews’ fabulously acidic book Boomers has earned a rousing enough recommendation from me that I decided to feature her as the first guest in the newly revived M. Tracey podcast series, now hosted on Substack. Previously I’d been averse to demarcating political conflict by generational lines, but this book has spicily dispelled any lingering apprehension I had in that regard. There’s plenty of cancellable material in here if you’re inclined to be scandalized — an apologia for the virtues of old-style European empire, a counter-intuitive ode to the savvy of Al Sharpton, numerous bitter pills to swallow on the failures of American imperial hegemony and modern feminism, etc. Mysteriously though, Helen reports not yet having been canceled — which raises the question of whether she’s immunized by dint of already being a hardened conservative, and therefore not susceptible to demands for her to grovelingly repudiate herself. Or maybe it’s just because the potentially-scandalized lack the attention span to get through the book, which would be in keeping with her general thesis of boomer violence upon our collective cognitive faculties. Hope you enjoy the conversation.
How Boomers Ruined Everything