“I don’t want to have to deal with blonde Kardashians for the next four years,” Kim Gordon told us last night at a book signing in Miami. “The Kardashians were annoying enough and now the blonde version is upon us.”
Even in the midst of this post-election anxiety, the former Sonic Youther has been busy as ever. Just a couple of months after releasing her first solo song, she played a Nov. 12 show at National Sawdust with her current project, Body/Head, to celebrate their new live EP, No Waves. Then she jetted down to South Beach, where she has a short in Art Basel’s film program. Add to all that, the book signing last night at the The Miami Beach Edition, an intimate rosé-and-canapés affair in a bungalow by the hotel’s pool.
(Photo: Angelo Fabara)
No, Gordon hasn’t already written a sequel to her memoir— this tome, titled Noise Name Paintings and Sculptures of Rock Bands That Are Broken Up, is a companion to a show of the same name that opened at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, last year. The exhibit included a live performance by Body/Head (a recording is packaged with the book) as well as Gordon’s Noise Name paintings, featuring the scrawled, dripping names of beloved noise bands like The Stooges and Pussy Galore (a Secret Abuse one, you’ll recall, was going for $10,000 at the Mudd Club rummage sale.)
Aside from being a musician, visual artist, and author, Gordon— like all of us, really— has become a political commentator of late. Okay, maybe not a commentator so much as a concerned citizen who’s been anxiously retweeting everyone from Bernie Sanders to Steve Bannon protesters asking for her support. But how does Gordon herself feel about the nation’s descent into what one might call Male White Corporate Oppression?
When we asked her last night, her answer was very much that of someone who had recently moved back to her childhood home of Los Angeles. “I just feel like it goes back to the question about the Electoral College,” she said. “California has one of the six biggest economies in the world, and yet we get two puny representatives, you know, votes. And we pay so much taxes and we get so little in return– that’s the kind of stuff that really needs to be revised.”
We asked her how she felt about the Dear Ivanka campaign, which is trying to appeal to Donald Trump’s “voice of reason” via Instagram posts and letters directed at his daughter. We figured Gordon might have something to say about it, since one of her book signing’s co-presenters, Bill Powers of Half Gallery, was among those who picketed Ivanka’s apartment last week.
“I don’t know what to say about her,” Gordon told us, admitting that she didn’t want to be mean. “She probably just wants to make money. It’s all she knows— that’s her world, she’s a businesswoman.”
Daddy Trump, meanwhile, is a product of “the whole reality TV mentality that’s been building up over the last 15 years,” Gordon observed. “His TV show is what made him into a brand name and gave him the confidence to run for president. Reality TV viewing has set up these weird models of regressive behavior, or arrested behavior, that’s taken us back to the playground of: ‘If you don’t want to be a loser, you’re with me.’ It’s like people want to associate themselves or relate to people who they think are winners, even in this weird way. And I think obviously Trump has appealed to them.”
Reporting by Angelo Fabara.
Really? Why don’t you compare and contrast what Trump says he will do to what the one you voted for says she will do. Make a REALLY well laid out case for why she would be the better candidate (if that’s even possible) instead of just focusing on superfluous bullshit.
You make some good observations, but your attempt at psychoanalyzing Trump’s voting constituency is simply not a valid argument at all for why a Hillary presidency would be preferable to a Trump presidency.
“White male corporate oppression”. Are you KIDDING me. Because Hillary’s guilt free oppressive corporatism has been cute all along. The Clinton Foundation accepting large donations from foreign nations in exchange for weapons deals isn’t treasonous or some kind of war crime. That’s just high stakes grrrl power brokerage. The way she’s supported and benefitted from free Trade in the past? That’s just whutevs. Clinton Foundation stealing 2 billion from Haitian relief efforts and accepting over 10 million from murderously patriarchal and misogynistic hell holes like Saudi Arabia?….Oh Alt right delete you xenophobic hate monger! Hillary has a vagina and that’s why she’s the best one for the job. Hillary is a kick ass interventionist who takes it upon herself to depose foreign rulers, even ones elected democratically! Because that’s America’s job right? For a state department rep to help effect regime changes in foreign countries using military might, because we don’t want those jerky man rulers to let their citizens exploit their countrie’s own mineral wealth and natural resources and have their own currency independent of the emerging global community. Hillary is empowered.
This comment below is not a swipe at Kim Gordon or of how she interprets feminism and female empowerment, but rather at the article writer’s suggestion that a Hillary Clinton presidency would provide a safe haven from the “white male corporate oppression” that Donald Trump represents. Excuse me? White male corporate oppression is when multi national corporations outsource American jobs to other countries to avoid excessive taxation in America and to ship back the products duty free, which is what Bill and Hillary have promoted all along. Hillary Clinton stated in an email that she thinks you should have a public and a private version of national policy and there are transcripts of her telling corporate and banking leaders in a foreign country I don’t recall, that she will privately enable free Trade. Donald Trump wants to reduce taxation of the one percent, thus helping keeping a lot of jobs in the U.S., whereas Hillary wants to tax everyone into oblivion. She proposed a minimum of one trillion dollars in tax increases. So how do you justify your idiotic opinion that Hillary will bring less white male corporate oppression that Donald Trump? You can’t.
Most of her campaign was funded by Wall Street, or a good amount of it right? And yet you think she is a safe haven from white, male, corporate oppression than Donald Trump? You must be joking.