0:00

Do you think your lower management

0:02

job, which is on the brink of extinction,

0:05

is your ticket to a lifelong career

0:07

at that same company? Yes? Okay,

0:10

okay. Do you think our social programs,

0:13

which are already

0:16

crumbling, will be there to support you

0:18

fully in your old age? Yes?

0:21

Do you think that, in the face of potential

0:23

financial catastrophe, buying

0:25

it another pair of chunky waffles

0:28

old sneakers was the best use

0:30

of your life savings? Yes?

0:33

The classic baby boomer heart

0:35

in the fifties wallet in the nineties.

0:39

Yeah, Cathy is a boomer.

0:42

I know, I know, because you might be liking

0:44

her a lot more than you used to. But yeah,

0:47

she is extremely so.

0:50

That was a strip from the nines with a

0:52

cheery dough eide Kathy talking

0:54

to her tax accountant about her financial

0:56

history, then walking away from him

0:59

in blissful a narrance. In the final

1:01

panel, it's sharp satire from

1:03

Kathy guys White. Her generation was

1:05

notorious for being bad spenders,

1:08

worst savers, and aggressive

1:10

holders onto the reins of power

1:12

while the earth shrivels to a crisp

1:14

before our very eyes. There are a generation

1:17

that began with a gasp of social

1:19

change, who went on to ditch progressivism

1:21

for an aggressive cultural conservatism

1:24

that still holds the United States

1:27

and their generation to this day.

1:29

Like most people my age, I'm a late

1:32

millennial. I don't like

1:34

boomers, and so going

1:36

into researching this episode, I found

1:38

the generation at large to be aggressively,

1:41

selfish, deflective when confronted,

1:44

and just the epitome of wealth.

1:46

That's just the way things are. And to interrogate

1:49

the ideas, I found the Cathy

1:51

character to be a pretty solid

1:54

usher to guide us through how the boomers

1:56

got to where they started to where

1:58

they are now. Because most of what I find

2:00

frustrating about the Kathy comic

2:02

strips are the same things that I find

2:04

frustrating about my parents, my aunt's,

2:07

my uncle's. While yes, no generation

2:10

is a monolith, there are through

2:13

lines, and this commentary was something

2:15

that Kathy guys White was doing very

2:17

deliberately, along with many other

2:19

comic artists of her generation like

2:21

Gary Trudeau with Doonesbury, like

2:23

Alison Bechdeal with Likes to Watch out

2:26

For, like Keith Knight with the k Chronicles,

2:28

and on and on. So in this episode,

2:31

we're going to take a look at what Kathy's work

2:33

said about her generation, who

2:35

she represented, what issues Kathy,

2:37

guys, whites were tackled, and how

2:39

it resonated with a wide swath

2:41

of boomer women across race and class

2:44

lines. So let's get into a baby. This

2:46

is Oh. Can I cue the song? God

2:49

damn it? Three days of no Cathy, sleep,

2:51

paralysis, demon streak and it's and it's

2:53

broken. What do you want? Why

2:55

the song? Fine? She

2:58

paced into the world in the nineteen

3:01

seventy six. She's at what, She's

3:03

out on dates and she don't like politics.

3:05

From mama and herban to with feminist

3:08

friends. She's fighting all the stands

3:10

it with chocolate and hand Kathy,

3:14

She's fighting back to stressed

3:17

with success. Let's go slack,

3:19

Oh Cathy, Bakathy Cathy,

3:23

She's gotta like go in all.

3:42

Okay, boomers get

3:45

it. Okay, we're gonna drop that, but let's get

3:47

acquainted. I'm a millennial. Zoomers

3:50

hate us both, so we have that in

3:52

common. Right, and in ten years,

3:55

people who are currently in kindergarten

3:57

will hate zoomers. That's the generational

4:00

circle of life. And sure

4:03

generational divides were designed

4:05

and sort of siloed for the benefit

4:07

of predatory advertisers more than

4:09

anything else, but they do provide some sort

4:11

of order and Jesus

4:14

Christ, Boomers, there are a lot

4:16

of you, the Baby Boomer generation,

4:19

and for this episode, I'll define them as

4:21

people born in the US between nineteen

4:24

and nineteen sixty four, grew up in

4:26

the post World War two economic

4:28

boom, and either came of age or

4:31

had their earliest memories shaped

4:33

by things like the Vietnam War protests,

4:36

the civil rights movement, and second wave

4:38

feminism. Bruce Givney wrote

4:40

a book called A Generation

4:43

of Sociopaths, How the Baby Boomers

4:45

Betrayed America, and described

4:47

the generation like this in an interview

4:50

with Box. I

4:52

focus on the first two thirds of

4:54

boomers because their experiences

4:57

are pretty homogeneous. They were raised

4:59

after the war and so have no

5:01

real experience of trauma or the

5:03

Great Depression, or even any

5:05

deprivation at all. More

5:08

importantly, they never experienced

5:10

the social solidarity that unfolded

5:12

during wartime and that helped produce

5:15

the New Deal. But it's

5:17

really the white middle class boomers

5:19

who exemplify all the awful characteristics

5:22

and behaviors that have defined this generation.

5:25

They became a majority of the electorate in the

5:27

early nineteen eighties, and then they fully

5:29

consolidated their power in Washington

5:31

by January nine, and

5:34

they've basically been in charge ever since.

5:37

Boomers, He is not wrong. This

5:39

is more or less accurate, and so,

5:42

with all due respect, I think the best way to

5:44

get started here would be to recap

5:46

the events of your generation so

5:48

far anyways, because you don't seem interested

5:51

in giving up power anytime soon. Do you

5:53

take it easy? Millennial? You're not

5:55

my mommy, You're fictional. We'll

5:58

talk to my mommy later

6:00

in the episode. Bruce Givney

6:02

said in this same box interview that boomers

6:05

quote were born into great fortune

6:07

and had a blast while they were on top.

6:10

But what have they left behind? This

6:12

is a generation that is dominated

6:14

by feelings, not by facts.

6:17

The irony is that boomers criticize

6:19

Millennials for being snowflakes,

6:21

for being too driven by feelings.

6:24

But the Boomers are the first big

6:26

feelings generation. So

6:30

what are these big feelings that Gibney's

6:32

talking about. Let's go back to the source.

6:34

Boomers were raised by either the Silent

6:37

or the Greatest generations born

6:39

anywhere between nineteen hundred and ninety

6:41

five, generations that had survived

6:44

two world wars and a Great Depression,

6:46

and hadn't been born into the relative

6:48

economic stability and the global

6:51

superpower that American boomers had.

6:53

In the Kathy Comics, our look into

6:55

this previous generation is through Mom,

6:58

Cathy's overbearing mother whose old

7:00

world values constantly chafed with

7:03

Kathy's struggle to balance a career and

7:05

a satisfying personal life. You might

7:07

remember from episode two. Mom is

7:09

both a character built on stereotypes

7:12

about her generation, who also drew

7:15

from Kathy, guys White's real life

7:17

kick ass mother and Guys White Anne

7:19

emigrated to the US as a young girl

7:21

and went on to get a degree in journalism,

7:23

only to be forced to give that career up

7:26

when her husband, Kathy's father returned

7:28

from World War Two. She went on to get her

7:30

master's but didn't tell anyone until

7:33

years later. This story reflected

7:35

the realities of many women of the Silent

7:38

generation. They were welcomed into

7:40

the workplace while men were away at war,

7:42

then forced out when those men

7:44

returned, and the issues they faced

7:46

definitely influenced the politics

7:49

of the liberal mainstream second wave

7:51

feminist movement, and while the Mom

7:53

character is mainly remembered as a

7:55

loving, if kind of naggy old

7:57

world presence guys. White found opportunities

8:00

to satirize her generation's predicament

8:03

in the storyline from the late seventies

8:05

in which Kathy's mom has a crisis of

8:07

faith in herself. So here's a

8:09

strip from that series. Kathy

8:11

is on the phone with her mom.

8:14

Mom, you just can't be depressed

8:17

about being a mother and a housewife. People

8:19

like you are the heart and soul of the world.

8:21

You're the creator of life, the keeper

8:24

and nurisher of life. You're at the beginning,

8:26

the home, the foundation, the

8:29

reason behind everything else anybody

8:31

ever does. In the final panel,

8:33

Mom is standing in her kitchen. She's

8:35

holding a broom and she's surrounded by

8:37

housework. She says, how

8:40

can something so important be so boring?

8:43

In the next trip, Kathy and her mother are

8:45

together in her mom's kitchen, continuing

8:48

the same discussion. Did you like

8:50

being a housewife when you were first married? Mom?

8:53

No, Kathy, I used to cry every morning when

8:55

your dad went off to work because he had someplace important

8:57

to go, and all he had to do was wait for him

8:59

to come home. Yeah, but you

9:01

got over crying every morning, didn't

9:04

you never. Just about the time

9:06

I quit crying about him, I discovered soap

9:08

operas. Kathy

9:10

guys White sticks the landing on a joke, as

9:12

she always does, but the message here is clear.

9:15

The expectations put on Mom to be a

9:17

housewife aren't ones that she invited

9:20

or even enjoyed. They were just ones

9:22

that the culture she lived in forced

9:24

her to accept. This is hinted at

9:26

in other storylines later in the comic,

9:29

when Mom begins a series of small

9:31

businesses to provide structure and

9:33

meaning to a life that she wasn't supposed

9:35

to derive those things from. This was

9:37

the way that many mothers of the boomer generation

9:40

came up, and as Kathy's trips explore,

9:42

these old school values and constructs

9:45

conflicted with the social movements that boomers

9:47

were growing up around. When the oldest boomers

9:49

were in their early twenties and the youngest

9:51

were in grade school, social movements of

9:53

in eighteen sixties brought a great deal

9:55

of American trauma to the forefront,

9:58

from the Civil rights movement to Second Way feminism

10:00

to anti Vietnam War protests.

10:02

The boomers often take credit for

10:04

these movements, but there's a strong argument

10:07

that there is a case of kind of stolen valor going

10:09

on there. I got a chance to interview writer

10:11

Jill Philippovic, author of Okay,

10:13

Boomer, Let's talk how my generation

10:16

got left behind? On the mythos

10:18

that surrounds early boomer activism.

10:21

You know, whenever critiques of boomers

10:23

come up, I think, especially in progressive

10:25

spaces, what I hear from a lot of boomers

10:27

themselves is, you know, well,

10:30

wait a minute, We're not all these kind of

10:32

reactionary boomer Trump

10:34

conservatives. Where the people

10:36

who are on the front lines of the civil rights

10:38

movement, Where the people who were on

10:40

the front lines of the second wave feminist movement.

10:43

Um. But when we think of who were the

10:46

leaders of the second way feminist movement,

10:49

um, you know, people like Gloria Sinum for

10:51

example. Um. Those

10:53

folks from are older than boomers.

10:56

Um Sum I believe was a member of the silent

10:58

generation. Um. So

11:01

it's not it's not that baby

11:03

boomer women were not feminists.

11:05

They they certainly were. Um,

11:08

they just weren't necessarily the folks that we think of

11:10

leading the movements in the nineteen

11:12

sixties and nineteen seventies. Our

11:14

idea of what the nineteen sixties

11:16

and seventies were UM, which

11:19

is very focused on the activism

11:21

and the very successful activism

11:23

UM of many progressive baby boomers,

11:26

does not encompass the fact that the

11:29

vast majority of Americans, the vast majority

11:31

of Baby Boomers, were not participants

11:33

in these movements. Right. Most

11:36

boomers were not going to anti war protests.

11:38

UM. Most boomers were not going to

11:41

civil rights marches or feminist marches. As

11:43

much as every single boomer I'm

11:45

sure we'll say they were there, um,

11:47

most of them were not, and many

11:49

of them opposed those movements as they were

11:51

happening. So Boomers

11:54

are and have long been an

11:56

incredibly politically divided

11:58

generation. UM. Millennials

12:00

are much more politically cohesive. We are, as

12:03

a generation, much more politically progressive.

12:05

UM. Boomers have always had this kind

12:08

of not always right down the middle, you

12:10

know, it shifts a bit from from decade

12:12

to decade, but a half

12:14

that is a rough

12:16

half that is very progressive, in a rough half

12:18

that is pretty conservative. A

12:21

lot of critics say that the boomers did not

12:23

experience any national trauma

12:25

in their young lives. This is a point that's invoked

12:28

pretty often. Oh, the boomers grew

12:30

up in this cushy, leave it to beaver environment.

12:32

The silent generation had the Great Depression

12:35

in World War two, millennials had

12:37

draconian nine eleven policies, the

12:39

Iraq War, the Great Recession. And this

12:41

is true enough. Boomers grew up in a nation with

12:43

more financial and environmental stability

12:46

than the ones before or after. But

12:48

consider how the Vietnam Draft affected

12:50

a great deal of male boomers. The draft

12:53

ran from nineteen sixty four to nineteen seventy

12:55

three, from men eighteen to twenty five, and

12:57

a Duke University paper from two thousand

12:59

and for stated that a third of

13:02

early male boomers served in the Vietnam

13:04

War. That said, there is some dissonance

13:07

with how the boomer generation tends to characterize

13:10

itself. There were some older boomers,

13:12

or cuspy boomers, that were instrumental

13:14

in these social movements because they

13:16

got involved very young. Chairman

13:18

Fred Hampton was a boomer. Ruby Bridges

13:21

is a boomer. And I don't want to discredit the

13:23

effective youth organizing that went on during

13:25

that time, but the majority of leaders

13:28

that we associate with this era are from

13:30

the previous generation, the silent generation.

13:33

Your glorious Steinem's You're Angela,

13:35

Davis's The Chicago Seven, Malcolm

13:37

X. The list goes on all silent generation.

13:40

Marcia Johnson was a CUSP, So we'll give

13:43

the boomers that one. And while these generational

13:45

divides are deeply arbitrary, to

13:47

say that the Boomers were an inherently

13:49

anti establishment group is

13:52

kind of a stretch. But they definitely

13:54

grew up around and often benefited

13:56

from the progress made from these

13:58

movements. So the leaders of the

14:00

sixties and early seventies weren't boomers.

14:03

Who are the boomers?

14:06

I asked Jill to give me an idea of

14:08

what the demographics of boomers were and

14:10

whether the popular interpretation of them

14:12

as suburban nights who grew up on TV

14:15

and prosperity was actually

14:17

accurate. As

14:19

we said, baby Boomers, especially

14:21

when they were younger, were

14:23

an overwhelmingly white generation.

14:26

Boomers have gotten less white through

14:28

time, um, in large part because

14:30

of immigration. UM. So they're

14:32

and reationally have become more diverse

14:35

UH as they've aged, because more

14:38

folks from other countries have gotten into

14:40

the US and helped to diversify

14:43

the baby boomers. But you

14:46

know, the sort of defining characteristic

14:49

of Baby boomers, So being born

14:52

into post war prosperity, UM,

14:55

living in the kind of single families suburban

14:58

home that you know, perhaps you're that

15:00

your parents owned, and we're perhaps

15:02

the first generation of people in your family to

15:04

ever be able to own a home thanks

15:07

to the federal government. UM.

15:09

That's a very white boomer story,

15:12

right, because the all

15:14

of the laws that we're setting

15:17

out UM where

15:19

investment in building new suburban

15:22

homes were who could live in those homes,

15:24

who qualified for government

15:27

backed mortgage. UM,

15:29

how certain neighborhoods were assessed

15:31

about you for whether or not uh

15:34

they would qualify for these government back

15:36

mortgages, and at what rates. All

15:38

of that was highly highly racialized.

15:40

So you probably heard the term redlining. UM.

15:44

That was what was happening. You know, majority

15:46

black neighborhoods during the Keeno neighborhood

15:48

as well. We're getting redlines in

15:51

nine UM,

15:53

while majority white neighborhoods were

15:55

getting blue lines, which essentially invent

15:59

these are good investments. We will give

16:01

preferential mortgages to these areas,

16:04

uh, enabling the parents

16:06

of white the white parents of hype

16:08

baby boomers to set their kids

16:11

up for successful adulthood.

16:14

Boomers aren't as diverse as the generations

16:17

that came after them, but it is very common

16:19

for the experiences of marginalized

16:22

boomers to be kind of cast aside.

16:24

These issues still persist now. Non

16:26

white boomers were faced with persistent racist

16:29

policy being made by a government whose

16:31

officials barely represented them,

16:33

and these days black and brown boomers

16:36

are retiring later and have less

16:38

access to consistent healthcare. According

16:40

to a paper called Baby

16:42

Boomers of Color by Melvin Delgado,

16:45

that Duke University study from two thousand

16:47

and four highlights and challenges

16:49

the tendency to homogenize the

16:51

Boomers as a completely white

16:54

block or a completely progressive

16:56

block. The study highlights a strong

16:58

streak of conservatism and Boomers from a

17:00

very early age, saying that quote

17:03

in nine, many of George

17:05

Wallace's supporters were young, southern,

17:07

and rural unquote. So while there

17:09

is this popular narrative that the boomers

17:12

started as radicals and gradually

17:14

sold out, some just started

17:16

there. Early boomers were

17:18

a much more diverse group than the white

17:20

dominated pop culture and TV of

17:22

the time indicated twelve percent

17:25

of Early Boomers and nearly fifteen percent

17:27

of Lake Boomers were immigrants

17:29

and one third of later boomers

17:31

aren't white. Boomers in the l

17:33

g B, t q I A plus community

17:36

were frequently erased from the narrative

17:38

as well, a generation that was antagonized

17:41

by anti queer policies, a cultural

17:43

intolerance of coming out, and being

17:46

disproportionately affected by the

17:48

AIDS epidemic. So there's

17:50

no typical boomer really, like

17:52

any group, they differ in political

17:55

leanings and by race and gender and

17:57

sexuality, but there was a specific

18:00

lack of Boomers that were drawn to Kathy

18:02

comics. Working Boomer women. I

18:04

asked Jill Philipovic who the

18:06

average boomer woman was. Boomers

18:10

generally, and Boomer women in particular

18:13

surged into institutions

18:15

of higher education, their generation to

18:17

college in astounding numbers, um,

18:20

and women particularly were,

18:23

uh, we're surging into college.

18:26

Um. Boomer women also were

18:30

a huge new and emergent force

18:32

in the paid workforce. Uh.

18:35

So, what I'm looking for running into these really

18:37

unfair structures, whether that was the

18:40

glass ceilings, or not being promoted given

18:42

your gender, whether that was sexual harassment

18:44

at work, whether that was realizing

18:46

that as life for American

18:48

women was changing really radically,

18:50

and women themselves were changing and

18:54

so coming up against that tension

18:57

both in the workplace and in the home.

19:00

Um, you know, Boomer women really were

19:02

on the front lines of

19:04

all those cultural, social,

19:07

and political shifts. They were living them. The

19:09

average boomer woman, I

19:12

think, is somebody who probably entered

19:15

early adulthood with

19:17

a lot of optimism about how

19:19

things were changing in her favor

19:22

because they were, um,

19:24

only to encounter a

19:27

whole bunch of roadblocks.

19:29

Um that you

19:32

know indelibly shaped her personal

19:34

and family life. UM.

19:36

Yeah, I think there's a reason why Boomer women were

19:38

the ones who have put words on

19:41

what a lot of even women of our generation

19:43

now faced, you know, things like sexual harassment,

19:47

um, things like domestic violence. Right,

19:50

that was not particularly

19:53

well understood concept until Boomer

19:55

women were coming into adulthood.

19:58

And so I do think, you know, the average

20:00

boom or a woman could probably look at

20:03

who she would be if

20:05

she had been born in the eighties or the nineties

20:07

or the two thousands and see your

20:10

wife for herself, um,

20:12

you know, but can also be in a position to

20:14

look at her mother's life and see

20:17

all the ways in which she

20:19

lived with much more freedom

20:21

and many more opportunities and kind

20:23

of any generation of women before her, and

20:27

if this description doesn't exactly

20:30

match up with Queen Cathy guys

20:32

White. She was born in nine fifty to

20:34

an immigrant parent, went to college,

20:36

but wasn't encouraged to dream too

20:38

big, and she tried to build her own career

20:40

in life for herself instead of getting married

20:43

and having kids right away. Here's a bit of

20:45

my interview with her from this spring to that

20:47

effect. You

20:49

know, I think for me it was a gradual awareness

20:52

of of a different world

20:54

for women than the one I had grown

20:56

up expecting. And my mom,

20:59

who I've also written about is

21:01

who is just remarkably a

21:05

remarkable traditionalist

21:07

and feminist. At the same time, working

21:10

boomer women loved Kathy comics,

21:13

but the idea of women in the workplace

21:15

wasn't a Boomer invention. Working

21:17

class women had been doing it for millennia,

21:20

and women across class lines were expected

21:22

to contribute labor during World War Two,

21:25

but the idea of women entering the workplace

21:27

and staying there was a newer

21:29

concept, and so the

21:32

girl Boss pipeline was introduced.

21:35

Beginning in the seventies, American women

21:37

had increased access to capital

21:40

and capitalism without having

21:42

to be married The Kathy strips were

21:44

well equipped to comment on this through Kathy

21:47

the reluctant middle class feminist, Andrea

21:50

the hardline feminist determined to work

21:52

at the highest level possible, Girl

21:54

Waltz, and Charlene the

21:57

underpaid, overworked secretary.

21:59

Here's a strip from the late nineteen seventies.

22:01

Kathy is on the phone with Andrea.

22:04

Hi, Andrea, it's Kathy. I'm real

22:07

sorry if I woke you up, but I've been thinking about what

22:09

you said. Just let me see

22:11

if I have this straight, Andrea. If

22:13

I've become a housewife and cook meals,

22:15

I'll be a subservient slave. But

22:17

if I were a chef in a restaurant, I'd bring

22:19

dignity to all of womanhood. If

22:22

I spend my days cleaning bathtubs and toilets,

22:24

my status as a female is equal to a groveling

22:27

worm. But if I go work for the

22:29

sewer company, I'll make headlines

22:31

as a feminist star. What's the difference,

22:33

Andrea? What makes the same masly

22:35

job an insult if you do it at home, but

22:38

an honor if you can make it a career. There's

22:41

a pause. Andrea answers money,

22:46

especially once the nineteen eighties and

22:48

the Reagan administration hit. This emphasis

22:51

on capital for the individual and

22:53

proving one's worth through labor and consumption

22:55

became a huge emphasis of the

22:58

boomers. Here's another strip from this AM

23:00

era showing Kathy running around doing

23:02

her daily tasks and thinking to herself.

23:05

And I want to be specific about the fact that she

23:07

is thinking this to herself, because

23:09

so much of the criticism of Kathy comics

23:12

relies on the assumption that she's just saying

23:14

all of this out loud to anyone who will listen. In

23:16

this trip, she's thinking, I

23:19

got up at seven and showered and dressed

23:21

for work, just like a man. I

23:24

shoved down a cup of coffee and charged in a rush

23:27

our traffic, just like a man.

23:30

I worked all day, I thought the evening

23:32

traffic, and now I'm home, just

23:34

like a man. She sits on the easy

23:37

chair in her apartment, looking confused.

23:39

I thought I was supposed to feel fulfilled by now.

23:57

Cathy's critics felt that her issues were

23:59

redundant in whiny, and I

24:01

had to ask myself, is there any

24:03

angle where I can see their point? You're

24:05

kidding? I thought we were cool. We are

24:08

cool. Kathy I just have to consider the

24:10

full picture here. I thought you weren't a both

24:12

sides, sir, I thought that was your thing, Kathy.

24:15

Could you give me the benefit of the doubt. This

24:17

is going somewhere. I am so sick

24:19

of being called a whiner when women who love the comic

24:22

felt the same way I did, but couldn't say it out

24:24

loud. I totally agree with you.

24:26

I and the fact that men disliked

24:29

it so much just proves my point. If

24:31

you said any of it out loud, you

24:33

were called a loser. You were pathetic,

24:36

Kathy. I know I was just setting

24:38

up the next segment. Say what you will

24:40

about boomer women. But Kathy,

24:42

you were not real. You were my sleep paralysis

24:45

demon. And I swear I know a lot of women

24:47

resonated with you. I talked to them. You

24:50

you talked to them, I did. I spoke

24:52

with ten boomer women from a variety

24:54

of different backgrounds in class and race who

24:56

Kathy comics had resonated a bit specifically

24:59

about their experience asas in the workplace.

25:01

Oh that sounds

25:03

nice, it is, Please

25:06

leave my room,

25:08

jeez. I interviewed boomer women about

25:10

their early experiences in the workplace after

25:12

being raised by Silent generation parents,

25:14

and I found that even the exaggerations

25:17

in the Kathy strip were for many

25:19

people based in real experiences.

25:22

Particularly during the Reagan and Bush

25:24

senior years. These were the backlash

25:26

years, where the games that the women's

25:29

liberation movement made in the seventies was

25:31

met with strong retaliation both

25:33

systemically and an individual

25:36

workplaces. The nineteen eighties were

25:38

a critical turning point for boomers.

25:41

With the Reagan presidency came a

25:43

wave of American conservatism.

25:46

We're talking policies that widened

25:48

the gap between the rich and the poor,

25:50

with declining wages and a lower

25:53

standard of living for the working class.

25:55

We're talking rampant deregulation

25:57

and tax breaks to the finance industry

26:00

that made Wall Street ridiculously

26:02

rich and would end in a recession

26:04

that really and truly fucked everyone

26:06

over in two thousand and eight. These were

26:09

years where Reagan claimed to want to scale

26:11

government down all well, increasing

26:13

government spending, slashing programs

26:15

that supported the environment and the working class,

26:18

and increased the military budget. He

26:20

put the US into debt all well, saying

26:22

government is not a solution to our problem.

26:24

The government is the problem. This was a

26:26

time where American rugged individualism

26:29

was stressed. If you didn't succeed,

26:32

it was inconceivable that a system had

26:34

failed you. It was your fault and your

26:36

fault alone. Uh. I need to stop talking

26:38

about Ronald Reagan. I needed, I

26:40

need to dissociate. I need a Mike's

26:42

Hard. Here are my talks with boomer

26:45

women, and to be clear, I am changing their

26:47

names for privacy reasons. Here's a conversation

26:49

I had with Amelia, who grew

26:51

up in a working class Hispanic family

26:53

in the nineteen seventies, became a first

26:56

generation college graduate, and eventually

26:58

went to work for a T and T. Amelia

27:00

got her start as a toll operator for the

27:02

phone company, which was then called

27:05

Mountain Bell, and then worked her way up

27:07

to secretary and then into the

27:09

low executive level in the engineering

27:11

department. She didn't work around

27:13

many women or people of color at all, and

27:16

told me how she would bond with the women

27:18

in her office in particular. So

27:22

when I was in high school, I remember

27:25

thinking, Oh, I'm gonna be like mom,

27:27

I'm just gonna graduate from high

27:29

school and I'll get married, and I'll have two

27:32

boys and two girls, and

27:34

I'll be a secretary. That was

27:36

my career goal. I'll just be a secretary.

27:38

That was. And that then

27:41

in the late sixties, certainly

27:44

somebody who was in high school could aspire to

27:46

having a career as a secretary,

27:49

you know, totally reasonable. Um.

27:53

And then my high school counselor

27:56

encouraged me to go to college. And

28:00

that was something that if you were born

28:02

and raised in Colorado of

28:04

Hispanic origin in the

28:06

fifties and the sixties, not

28:09

many people encouraged you to do. The

28:11

particular group that I fell into. Actually,

28:13

I'm still friends with one of the women that was

28:15

in that group day

28:19

Um. And that was nineteen seventy

28:25

three and four. Um. Yeah.

28:28

A couple of the women were married, and they were a little

28:30

bit older, maybe ten years older

28:32

than me. Um.

28:35

Couple of them were single. One

28:37

was a single mom. So

28:39

we had a variety of women.

28:41

They were all Anglo. There weren't very many

28:44

Hispanics at all

28:46

at all, engineering maybe a handful.

28:49

I am curious about. Yeah, your experiences

28:52

in that space as a as a Hispanic

28:54

woman as well. It sounds like there

28:57

were not many other Hispanic women to talk

28:59

to. Is that correct? What was

29:01

I guess what was what was your experience from that

29:03

perspective. I'm trying

29:05

to remember if there were any, and

29:09

I'm going back. I'm going down. Probably

29:12

through the seventies,

29:16

there were a handful of

29:18

Hispanic and black men

29:21

who were in the engineering department,

29:24

but there weren't many Hispanic

29:27

women. Again,

29:30

maybe a handful in the

29:32

various groups. And I'm talking a building

29:34

of probably a thousand people,

29:37

and I have to work with engineers

29:40

to get that done. Electrical

29:43

engineers, Anglo

29:46

male engineers. I

29:49

can remember their names. And

29:52

there were a couple of them that were particularly

29:54

fun to work with because they

29:57

would refuse to

29:59

get view the information that you needed.

30:03

And I don't

30:05

I I never really thought that their

30:08

refusal was because I was

30:10

his fanic. I always felt

30:12

it was because I was a woman, okay.

30:15

And of course in those days, you didn't want to

30:17

just go to your boss and say, Joe won't work

30:19

with me. Go talk to his boss,

30:21

because now you're whining, you know.

30:26

Amelia told me that beginning around

30:28

the late nineteen eighties, there were more efforts

30:30

to educate employees on sexual harassment

30:33

and racism in the workplace, but

30:35

these didn't move the needle by much. While

30:37

she worked at a T and T, she told me

30:39

while pulling out some notes, very much

30:42

still in executive mode. While into retirement,

30:44

she told me that for every white male executive,

30:47

the employee breakdown was this. White

30:50

men were in the workplace two to

30:52

one, men of color were in the workplace

30:54

one to forty eight. White women

30:57

were one to one three,

30:59

and women of color were less than

31:01

one and two hundred employees.

31:03

And even when people of color and women

31:06

were promoted, it was rarely

31:08

past a certain point. Top brass

31:10

remained very wide and very male.

31:13

Amelia left the company when her son

31:15

was six. We'll get back to that, and

31:17

she was adamant that while the inclusivity

31:19

training was a workplace shift,

31:22

the only way to actually change things

31:24

is on a systemic level. Here's what she

31:26

had to say. Well,

31:28

we would promote you all if you were qualified.

31:31

We will promote you if you had the experience.

31:34

Well, we would put you in those positions.

31:37

But you've never been in those positions.

31:39

Well, don't you have to raise your families.

31:42

Well how can you travel like

31:45

executives do and take three year

31:47

developmental positions in another

31:49

state? If you have children

31:51

at home, you can't just up and

31:53

leave for three years, can you. So

31:56

you started getting all of those kinds

31:58

of things thrown back at

32:00

you, just like yeah, yeah,

32:03

they're all excuses and and so there

32:05

was a period of time, I would say

32:07

in the in the early two

32:10

mid eighties

32:13

where the company did try with

32:15

different programs and training programs.

32:19

Always called him programs and programs don't

32:21

work. What works is systemic change.

32:24

I also spoke with Susie, who

32:26

started her career working as one of a

32:28

handful of women in a mind. She

32:30

had been raised by a firmly feminist

32:32

mother who brought her to women's groups when

32:35

she was a kid, but when she came of age,

32:37

she felt her only options for careers

32:39

were as a teacher, a nurse,

32:41

a social worker, or a secretary.

32:44

So she decided to go a different way.

32:46

Here's a little bit of our conversation. I'll

32:48

add a quick trigger warning here. This interview

32:50

does describe an incident of sexual harassment.

32:54

So you made this decision to go

32:56

into mining. How old were you when

32:58

you did that? And um, what what what

33:00

was the experience of being in I

33:03

was turning twenty when I went into the first

33:05

mine, and that

33:07

is I mean, you kind of alluded to this

33:09

in your email as well, but that that's a

33:12

very male dominated space.

33:15

Yes, there was very few women working

33:17

there. It was probably a town of two

33:20

thousand, and although I don't

33:22

know exactly how the women got hired.

33:24

When I did work there, there were other women

33:26

working there, and they tended to be wives

33:29

of the men that worked there.

33:32

Uh. And they may have gotten the job

33:34

because they needed the staff,

33:37

they needed the employee the employees,

33:40

and it may have been you know, if there's

33:42

what else are you going to do there? There's not

33:44

much to do in a little town of two thousand, so

33:46

you might as well get everybody working. So

33:49

it may have been that as well. So

33:51

it all in in all of the Like, I

33:53

worked in two minds and one

33:55

oil finery and this will

33:57

only happened to me once that somebody

34:00

sexually harassed me. Um,

34:02

and it was under the guise of res housing

34:04

and tickle fighting. Yeah,

34:07

So they were like, this guy was rough housing

34:10

and tickle fighting with me, and the woman

34:12

that I worked with, she was a little more aggressive

34:14

and out there, and I'm like, I'm just not like that.

34:16

Anyways, this guy is tickling me, and you

34:18

know, of course he's going to grab my breass. So

34:21

he grabbed my breass and I was like, what

34:23

the you know? And then and

34:25

then like it happened kind of quickly

34:28

and then it was over with. But everybody in the room

34:30

knew what was going on. There was like four

34:32

or five guys there and me and Judy,

34:35

and this patty guy was the one

34:37

that grabbed me and grabbed

34:39

my breast. So okay, so here's

34:41

the big revenge. There was always

34:43

a dance in the local dance hall, and

34:46

he was there with his

34:48

wife and all of those buddies

34:50

all sitting at a big table, and

34:53

Judy and I, twenty year old women

34:55

dressed to the nines, We

34:57

went over there and just come completely

35:00

flirted with them in

35:03

front of his wife. Wow.

35:05

The guys looked like they

35:07

were going to die, and

35:10

she looked like she was going to kill her

35:12

husband. Complete

35:14

revenge. Nobody ever went near

35:16

us again. Many

35:18

women I spoke with had stories like this,

35:21

experiencing harassment at work and

35:24

then with the understanding that

35:26

there would never be repercussions

35:28

for a male coworker, finding a

35:30

way to reconcile the experience

35:32

these moments of revenge. Susie

35:34

went on to leave the mind to work at

35:37

an oil refinery, where she once had

35:39

to put out a chemical fire and threw up

35:41

green flegm while pregnant. I

35:44

know she and the baby were fine, luckily,

35:46

but Susie left the industry to be a stay

35:48

at home mother. Shortly after that, she

35:50

started her own small business from home and

35:53

then later became a Somalia. She's

35:55

pretty cool. One

35:57

thing that does really interest me was the

36:00

seventies, being married was not.

36:03

You almost aspired not to be married. You know,

36:05

it was cool. You you live together, you know,

36:07

you do the hippie thing. You live together, and

36:11

the institution of marriage was

36:14

in jeopardy at that time, although

36:16

people were still getting married, and I would

36:18

certainly say that being married.

36:21

I pretty much had to get married to

36:24

get the job at sin Crude. The

36:27

Kathy character's frustrations in the workplace

36:29

was the point that most women I spoke with

36:31

connected with her on. For every Bilbert

36:34

comic strip into a cubicle wall,

36:36

there was one where Kathy was venting to Charlene

36:39

or putting one over on Mr Pinkley

36:41

and again, guys. White is directly pulling

36:43

from the experiences of her own

36:45

life and her friends in a way that really

36:48

struck a nerve. Here's a strip from the nineties

36:50

where Kathy is arguing for a raise

36:52

with Mr Pinkley. I'm

36:55

happy to discuss your raise, Kathy. Know why

36:57

you have what I call the executive

37:00

attitude. You have a real

37:02

knowledge of the financial strain this company

37:04

has been under. You have the vision to see

37:06

past a quick cash fixed to the long

37:08

term rewards. And you have

37:11

something even more important,

37:13

a list of the salaries of all the other employees.

37:16

Accurly Abbott,

37:20

Thousand, Bailey,

37:24

and like the women I spoke with, the

37:27

Cathy character never achieves pay

37:29

equity. For all of the complaints about

37:31

the futility of the Canthy characters

37:34

existence, what most critics didn't admit

37:36

is that these futile efforts were

37:38

reflective of most women working in

37:41

and outside of office environments

37:43

at this time. Here's Melanie,

37:45

a retired California ad executive,

37:48

discussing the pay equity issue that

37:50

led to her leaving a long time position.

37:53

And I'm like, wait a minute,

37:56

wait a minute, this isn't right. So

37:58

I go to the head boss, who

38:01

was the head of the entire corporation. So he's

38:03

the head of talent payments central

38:05

casting. Um, he's not my

38:08

Uh, he's not. He's what he's above

38:11

her. Um, he's the one

38:13

who is basically

38:16

setting setting more

38:18

of the salaries. Um.

38:21

And I said, I don't understand why Mark is

38:23

making more than I am.

38:26

He's like, because I asked. I

38:28

said, can I come in and talk to you about salary? And

38:30

he's like, oh, I just thought you're the cute blonde that works

38:32

down the hall. Wow.

38:36

I said, I'm the cute blonde who's

38:38

building you three million dollars a year, who

38:41

subsidizes them. And I,

38:44

this isn't fair. I supervise eight people.

38:47

I have a huge budget and

38:49

he's paid twenty dollars more

38:52

and he has a lot less responsibility. And

38:54

his answer was, well, you know, maybe

38:57

in a little bit, we'll see what we can do. And

39:00

while the Kathy character wasn't raising

39:02

kids during the comics run, Kathy

39:04

guys White was and speaks extensively

39:07

about the struggles of single parenting

39:09

on top of a thriving career in

39:12

her twenty nineteen essay collection Fifty

39:14

Things that Aren't My Fault. In

39:17

the Kathy comics, Andrea was

39:19

the character who advocated for working

39:21

mothers. After the high powered

39:23

girl boss had her first kid, Zenith

39:25

in the eighties and later her son Gus

39:27

in the nineties, andreas given an

39:30

extremely hard time by the company

39:32

she had built her career up at for a decade.

39:35

Boomers are widely considered to be the last

39:37

American generation where it's common to stay

39:39

with one company your entire career. And

39:41

while Andrea comes armed with information,

39:44

she's still spoken down to when asking

39:46

for parental benefits. These strips

39:49

are some of the best of Geistwaite

39:51

satire. I think. Here's a strip

39:53

from the eighties following Zenis

39:55

birth, Andrea is talking to an HR person.

39:59

If businesses to support parental leave

40:01

policies, it's because we hold the old

40:03

fashioned family units so sacred.

40:05

Only ten percent of the families in this country

40:07

live in an old fashioned family unit. We

40:10

hold motherhood sacred. Sixty percent

40:12

of mothers with children under age three work

40:14

full time. We hold the male

40:17

breadwinner sacred. The

40:20

woman who work are married to the men who earned less than

40:22

fifteen thousand dollars a year, and one

40:24

fifth of all families have no male breadwinner

40:26

at all. We hold the days of no statistical

40:28

analysis sacred. Andrea

40:31

makes great and very real points in

40:33

these strips, but Kathy Guyswhite doesn't

40:36

give her a win. In her fictional world.

40:38

Andrea was advocating for herself

40:40

to get parental leave and flex

40:42

hours at work and was denied

40:45

them by her workplace. As we've covered

40:47

in past episodes, Andrea is eventually

40:49

forced out of her job and has to

40:52

build her career from the ground up. Every

40:54

single woman I spoke with, even

40:56

though they were from a wide variety of backgrounds

40:59

and industry and classes, described

41:01

issues like Andreas when starting

41:04

families of their own and reference

41:06

this pay exorbitant child care fees

41:08

or get out of the workplace altogether. System

41:11

that had a stronghold on the American workplace

41:14

during the Reagan era and yes

41:16

still to an extent now. Amelia,

41:19

the a T and T executive, like Kathy

41:21

and her cohort, postponed marriage

41:23

and motherhood until her career was already

41:26

well established. She got married

41:28

at thirty seven in the late eighties, had

41:30

her son in and left

41:32

the company when her son was six. And

41:34

here's what she told me about that experience.

41:38

You just keep taking on

41:40

more, you

41:43

know. I I loved my career. I was single,

41:45

I was free. I owned my own home,

41:47

I had, you know, I was unencumbered.

41:50

Um, so I could come and go and do what I wanted

41:53

and balance it and manage

41:55

it. And then I got married and

41:57

then pretty quickly, Francisco

42:00

was born a year and a half

42:02

after we got married. And and

42:04

your life changes completely because

42:07

now you have this little person that you

42:10

have to care

42:12

for and train and

42:16

mentor and feed, and you know, all

42:18

of those things have to be

42:20

done. Here's Susie,

42:23

the former miner who left the office to

42:25

work from home and be with her kids. She

42:27

shared that prior to leaving her job,

42:30

this happened. Yeah,

42:32

I was pregnant. Wow, you

42:34

did. I was just like a few days pregnant. They had

42:36

to do a blood chest to find out, Oh my

42:38

goodness. And then they did a big study

42:41

on me because how many women are pregnant

42:43

on an all refinery. So I was a

42:45

good Yeah, so hygiene

42:47

did a big study on me. Wait, tell me about

42:50

that. That's fascinating. You know, they just

42:52

took about eight vows of blood out of me and

42:54

then you know, started just you

42:56

know, there was never any real follow up. They you

42:58

know, they would ask me questions and I did have

43:00

a healthy pregnancy and everything was fine. And

43:03

they said, because my pregnancy was so early

43:05

that there was really not much there yet.

43:08

You know, it's just a few cells really, So

43:11

then it was a stay home mom. Uh

43:14

and uh, I

43:16

did businesses out of my house. So

43:20

okay. So I I, you

43:22

know, I just could never worked in an office.

43:25

Like the whole idea of sitting at a desk

43:27

just drove me crazy. So

43:29

you know, I was just a really active person

43:32

and very tactile. I'm a very tactile learner.

43:35

So I just I just, you know, decided

43:38

I was going to stay home with my kids and figure something

43:40

out. And here's Melanie,

43:42

the retired AD executive, discussing

43:45

how she eventually left the workforce for

43:47

motherhood. Once I

43:49

had two kids, it became more difficult

43:52

to um to

43:55

keep doing. How I remember is

43:58

breastfeeding the middle wild. Julia

44:01

Spencer is two

44:04

and a half hanging on me. I'm on the phone

44:06

at home, talking to a client in New

44:08

York, trying to keep everybody quiet,

44:11

and all I can think of is I can't do this. I

44:14

can't do this. How do I do this? One kid was

44:16

okay? Um, two

44:18

kids became harder. I

44:35

want to acknowledge that the ability to leave

44:37

the workforce for motherhood is a degree

44:40

of privilege. Parents working paycheck

44:42

to paycheck or don't have a partner earning

44:44

additional income wouldn't even be able

44:46

to consider this, But consider these

44:48

options to leave the choice for American

44:51

mothers of this era to work

44:53

and patch together affordable childcare solutions

44:56

with family and friends, or work

44:58

and go for broken child care, or

45:01

not work at all and be the child

45:03

care. Let's the American system

45:05

of labor off the hook entirely.

45:08

These are not individual failures of parenting

45:11

or professionalism. Every woman I

45:13

spoke with was successful in her line

45:15

of work, but it was the organizations

45:17

they worked within that made it impossible

45:19

to meet the mark professionally and parentally

45:22

without either additional income or

45:25

sheer luck. Kathy Strips addressed

45:27

this frustrating split all the

45:29

time. And then there's the boomer

45:32

to end all others. My

45:35

mommy, Seriously, this was

45:37

very much the story of my own boomer

45:39

mom. She was a first generation

45:42

college graduate who worked at the Massachusetts

45:44

Treasury as a low ranking bond

45:46

accountant through her twenties, then

45:48

became a full time mom and the runner

45:51

of an extremely illegal day care

45:53

center in our house while I was growing

45:55

up. We were very fortunate that my dad's

45:57

income was enough to supplement this, but

45:59

the day care that she ran was born

46:01

out of this community necessity within

46:04

our pretty big family. My mom

46:06

took care of eight cousins and me

46:08

during the day because my aunts and uncles

46:10

couldn't afford expensive child care and

46:12

needed to work. Later, she would

46:14

go back to school, get her masters,

46:17

and become a teacher, where she's been

46:19

working for twenty years now. But it wasn't

46:21

really until I was an adult that I heard

46:23

much about her career at the Treasury

46:25

at all. So I decided to ask her

46:28

what those years before I existed

46:30

in the eighties in the early nineties

46:32

were like, and she, in

46:34

her typical way, did not hold back.

46:38

When I went into Boston, I

46:42

I learned the hard way that I was goddamn.

46:45

I was going to look good, and I was going to drag

46:47

them along, and I was going to meet my own

46:50

goals, giving up my

46:52

morals because I wasn't

46:54

a player. I never, you

46:57

know, slipped my way to the top. I never did anything

46:59

like that. Hair, the hair, the

47:01

makeup, definitely the accessories,

47:05

everything had to match. It was

47:07

very um

47:09

you know, a fashion forward idea. Your

47:12

body entered the room before you did. Your

47:15

brain wasn't a part of the room. Your body

47:17

was a part of the room.

47:19

And if you didn't look good, it didn't get the attention.

47:22

And if it didn't get the attention, you didn't get the opportunity.

47:26

This office madonna whore complex

47:28

was commented on in a lot of

47:30

nineties Kathy strips. Here's one of my favorite.

47:33

Mr Pinkley is talking to Kathy and

47:35

Charlene. If

47:37

women want to be respected in the office,

47:39

they have to stop wearing short skirts.

47:42

That does it, Mr Pinkley, When

47:44

we wore pants and didn't respect

47:46

us because we looked too militant.

47:49

When we were long skirts, men didn't

47:51

respect us because we were too frumpy.

47:53

For fifteen years, we've been buying a discarding

47:56

clothes, trying to find a respectable balance

47:58

between femininity and professional As a man,

48:00

we're sick of it. If you can't keep

48:02

your eyeballs where they belong, it

48:04

is not our problem. Charlene

48:06

says, very eloquent, Kathy,

48:09

never underestimate the fury of a woman

48:11

who just paid to have all of her clothes shortened.

48:14

My mom's experience in her office years

48:17

also mirrored the Kathy character's experience

48:19

with Mr. Pinkley from

48:22

when she is sexually harassed and forcibly

48:25

kissed, and the character is only able

48:27

to cope with this by discussing

48:29

it with other women in her office and beginning

48:31

a whisper network. It

48:34

was so not you and Caitlin,

48:38

because it was just understood that

48:40

either you took the path to

48:43

play the game the game to sweep to the top,

48:45

or you could play the game

48:48

to flirt towards your goal.

48:51

I chose to flirt toward my goal, and

48:54

I flirted mercilessly towards

48:57

my goals. And

48:59

I will say that hearing something

49:01

like this from your mom is um

49:04

interesting and also kind

49:06

of difficult to imagine in practice. Fortunately

49:10

and unfortunately I

49:12

didn't have to imagine it. Last year,

49:14

I found some old VHS tape

49:16

from when my mom worked at the Treasury when

49:18

she was my age, and I was pretty

49:21

horrified by the way I saw men

49:23

treating her on camera, So

49:25

I asked her if she would be willing to watch

49:28

these tapes back with me over zoom

49:30

with my aunt and her former co worker,

49:33

So it took us a few seconds to all get

49:35

on the same page over zoom. Now

49:37

what she's doing, Mary, is she's taping

49:39

us while with showing Well, she's showing

49:42

this to us. But

49:44

we figured it out, and I asked my

49:46

mom and my auntie Mary, who is

49:48

technically my mom's friend, but your mom's

49:51

friends or your aunts, that's just how it works. I

49:53

asked them both whether this treatment I

49:55

was seeing ever bothered them,

49:57

because the way that the older men in

50:00

their workplace spoke to them is, well,

50:02

here's a clip, I'm

50:06

going to see this, Lee,

50:09

I'm gonna grab your other

50:17

guys

50:27

happen through

50:33

at a Christmas party here, and the men

50:35

talking to them are at least twice

50:37

their age, And so I was a little surprised

50:39

to find that they didn't seem bothered

50:42

by this. Now, I understand

50:44

why you thought we'd be shocked, But we

50:46

felt so safe. That's

50:49

interesting to me. Was only one time that

50:51

I did not feel safe, and I

50:54

don't even remember who it was. I

50:57

mean, to think that would

51:00

come on to me for real, Um

51:04

wasn't even a thought. I don't

51:06

know. I mean, it's not like their feelings

51:08

are wrong or my feelings are

51:11

wrong, but they're certainly different,

51:14

because I would be curious

51:16

if someone talked to me like that at work. I

51:18

mean, the guy who's talking like this, Mr,

51:20

I'm going to grab you he wants threatened

51:23

to kill my dad. And apparently he

51:25

didn't even work at that office.

51:28

This could also very much be a Boston

51:30

in the nineteen eighties thing. But to me,

51:33

there was absolutely misogyny

51:35

going on in this workplace, as well

51:37

as possible mob activity.

51:40

Here's my mom reacting to a different

51:42

work party tape from

51:45

that's what we would hide his

51:47

desk, and he had doing

51:49

other business. He wasn't just

51:51

doing trait repy to this god.

51:55

He was running from that quarter. Whatever's

51:59

going on there is another podcast altogether,

52:02

and I wash my hands of it, but

52:04

they're accepting this behavior as a part

52:06

of what the workplace was. Lines

52:09

up with the other boomer woman I spoke with, and

52:11

with an interview with Kathy guys White herself.

52:14

This came up in episode two when I asked

52:16

Kathy about a convention from

52:18

early in her comic strip career when

52:21

she and a few other women were asked to parade

52:23

around wearing sashes that read women

52:25

Cartoonist. This lovely

52:28

group of very supportive men

52:30

declared at the Year of the Woman Cartoonist,

52:33

it wasn't a big graving thing. It was an honor.

52:36

But I'm going to say it was an honor

52:38

in um in a product

52:41

like a little a bit oblivious

52:44

away. So they did

52:47

have a skirt up in front the women who were doing

52:49

commis roofs. They did have a skirt up in front of

52:51

everybody, and they did place banners

52:53

on us that said woman cartoonist. So

52:58

God. And

53:01

of course this is an extremely small

53:03

sample size of women I spoke to. In

53:06

no way as this a comprehensive view

53:08

of boomer womanhood, but I hope it does

53:10

serve to demonstrate that the Cathy characters

53:12

prolific anxiety about thriving

53:15

in the workplace as a part of the first

53:17

American generation of women to be expected

53:20

to do so really wasn't much of an

53:22

overreaction at all. The workplace

53:24

was the intersection of a lot of issues,

53:27

financial inequity, the need to

53:29

postpone parenthood for career

53:32

because companies expected but did

53:34

not support parenthood, extreme

53:36

pressures to look and act a certain

53:38

way, and the acceptance that your coworkers.

53:41

Usually men were just that

53:44

way. I understand why

53:46

the that was just how it was. Mentality

53:48

could persist, but it's so

53:51

frustrating. I had to google that

53:53

guy who was harassing my mom to make sure

53:55

he had died, and she wasn't even

53:57

bothered by it. So as the boomers

53:59

and to their thirties and forties and the

54:01

nineteen nineties, the first boomer

54:04

president, Bill Clinton, was

54:06

elected, breaking the decade plus

54:08

of Republican administrations. Liberal

54:11

voters were initially hopeful. Clinton

54:14

said this while campaigning for the election.

54:18

The Reagan Bush years have exalted

54:20

private gain over public obligation,

54:23

special interests over the common good,

54:25

wealth, and fame over work

54:28

and family. The nineteen

54:30

eighties ushered in a gilded age

54:33

of greed and selfishness,

54:35

of irresponsibility and

54:37

excess, and of neglect.

54:41

But what happened when he was elected, Clinton,

54:44

a credibly accused sex offender, began

54:47

his first term by pushing for a gun

54:49

and healthcare reform, and while there

54:51

were economic and job gains, including

54:53

taxes on wealthier Americans during

54:56

his presidency, many Reagan

54:58

era issues remained an even

55:00

worsened by the end of his two terms.

55:02

The Clinton administration had slashed

55:04

welfare benefits and continued the

55:06

War on drugs, which claimed to

55:09

increase public safety, all while

55:11

perpetuating the mass incarceration

55:13

of Black Americans. Clinton introduced

55:16

the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy

55:18

that suppressed queer identity in the military

55:21

and encouraged discrimination. He

55:23

didn't provide any military assistance

55:25

during the Civil War in Rwanda, and his legacy

55:28

has been increasingly called into question

55:30

as the years go on. And Cathy comics

55:33

remained extremely popular throughout

55:35

the Clinton years, having huge success

55:37

in syndication and merchandizing

55:39

throughout the nineties. The Cathy character

55:42

resonated with women across the country,

55:44

even from her position of relative privilege

55:47

as a middle class, white CIS woman, because

55:49

her concerns and anxieties generally

55:52

mirrored that of many others in the boomer

55:54

generation. Did Dilbert do

55:56

that he did not? Dilbert

55:59

was a creep and his dog was a

56:01

fascist. Let's keep things moving,

56:04

shall we. A major

56:06

characteristic of American boomers

56:08

is their status as some of the biggest

56:10

consumers in our country's history,

56:13

and not particularly ethical consumers.

56:16

This is a burden shared with their parents as

56:18

well as the silent generation definitely

56:20

benefited from the post war economic

56:23

boom in the US, but these extreme

56:25

consumption habits continued long

56:27

into boomer adulthood, peaking

56:30

in the eighties and nineties. As someone

56:32

with a boomer mom who spent the first decade

56:34

of my life compulsively buying woven

56:37

baskets and putting them on credit cards,

56:39

the Cathy comics document this

56:41

consumption habit triggeringly.

56:44

Well. Here's Jill Philipovic of

56:46

Okay Boomer to unpack that. There's

56:49

really no question that boomers

56:52

are America's kind

56:54

of first major

56:57

consumer class.

56:59

Boomers spend a ton of money. They

57:01

spent a ton of money. They're kind of the first generation

57:03

of children to be advertised to. UM.

57:07

So they are a generation that has been

57:09

on the receiving end of advertisements

57:11

their entire life. UM.

57:14

I'm not sure it was quite true

57:16

for their parents. That it's certainly not to the same degree.

57:19

UM. And when

57:21

you look at consumer spending

57:24

habits now, I mean, boomers still

57:26

spend a tremendous amount of money on consumer

57:28

goods. It's also because boomers have

57:31

disposable income. UH. Boomers

57:34

have long been and remain a very

57:37

spending generation. UM.

57:40

You know, I think it's interesting that you point to the eighties

57:42

as the kind of turning

57:44

point there, because I

57:47

just I think that's right. I'd be curious. I

57:49

don't know the answer to this, but I'd be curious if you

57:51

looked at American consumers spending, what kind

57:53

of shifts happened in the nineteen

57:55

eighties, What did this spending

57:57

look like in practice. Let's go

58:00

back to one of the boomer woman I spoke with who

58:02

is uniquely suited to comment on this

58:04

phenomenon. Melanie, the ad

58:06

executive. She's now retired and living

58:09

in the Northwest, but grew up in

58:11

Santa Monica, California, raised

58:13

by a feminist single mother who got

58:15

a degree in social work after her divorce,

58:17

Melanie began her career at an attorney's

58:20

office, where it was quickly made

58:22

clear to her that she was not being judged

58:25

for her competence at the job. The

58:27

main thing I remember in applying for the job

58:30

was how fast you type? And

58:33

in the newspaper was written front office

58:35

appearance. What do we think

58:37

that means? I don't know

58:39

what. What does it mean?

58:42

You had to be attractive? Okay?

58:45

Melanie was not having it and she pivoted

58:47

to advertising at a big

58:49

deal California ad agency in the

58:51

nineteen eighties, just as the concept of

58:54

the supermodel was really taking

58:56

off. And I was especially interested to

58:58

hear about this because Melanie literally

59:00

had a hand in shaping some of the ads

59:03

that the Kathy character is constantly

59:05

comparing herself to in this trip. The

59:08

same ad that Kathy guys white

59:10

was very often satirizing. So

59:13

what was that job? Like, we

59:15

were and we were at the forefront of the

59:18

supermodel, the Sheryl Tigues,

59:20

the Christie Brinkley's the that

59:22

generation of woman. Interesting. Okay,

59:26

I did do Virginia Slims casting, which

59:28

was one of the biggest accounts, which my mother was

59:30

horrified at because it started

59:32

young women smoking. Right. I

59:34

promised her when I worked for myself, which I

59:36

did eventually, that I wouldn't accept

59:38

that account. But since I didn't work for myself,

59:41

I could not say no. Um.

59:44

And I think that's when it started because the

59:46

women and they were called girls,

59:49

they were not called women. Um.

59:52

I took ballet for about twelve years and we

59:54

all were all called girls and boys too, so

59:56

it wasn't you know. It depends upon

59:58

the context when we were using that term.

1:00:00

So it was like I was always we were all girls

1:00:03

and boys in ballet um.

1:00:05

But the models certainly were called girls.

1:00:08

Um they had to. But

1:00:11

they wanted them to look eight team.

1:00:14

They didn't want any wrinkles,

1:00:16

they didn't want you know, any

1:00:19

I mean, they wanted

1:00:21

them to look pristine. Um.

1:00:23

It was brutal. Melanie

1:00:26

was very frank with me about what the expectations

1:00:29

were for models at this time, not

1:00:31

beauty standards that she had invented,

1:00:33

but ones that it was part of her job to

1:00:36

reinforce. She told me about

1:00:38

the racism, colorism, and featurism

1:00:40

that came into this industry, the rampant

1:00:43

body issues that models developed in

1:00:45

order to remain competitive, and confirmed

1:00:48

a lot of what we knew. Eight supermodel culture

1:00:50

was extremely rigid and its

1:00:52

beauty standards and, as Melanie

1:00:55

describes in that smoking anecdote, morally

1:00:58

bankrupt in a way that only American

1:01:00

advertising can be. After doing

1:01:02

her time at the ad agency, Melanie

1:01:05

started her own company, where she was

1:01:07

thrilled to turn down any and all

1:01:09

cigarette ads and was able to set

1:01:11

a higher standard of how her models were

1:01:14

treated and, as she described

1:01:16

earlier in this episode, Melanie

1:01:18

became overwhelmed running her own company while

1:01:20

raising her kids and elected to

1:01:22

shutter the business and become a full

1:01:24

time mom. It's a distinctly

1:01:26

boomer story. The

1:01:29

women in the comic are aggressively marketed

1:01:32

to being told to optimize

1:01:34

themselves, to constantly spend

1:01:36

on fashion and beauty to achieve that

1:01:39

front office look that Melanie

1:01:41

was speaking about earlier, and Boomer

1:01:43

men were aggressively pursued by advertisers

1:01:46

as well, and boy

1:01:48

did Insecure Irving fall for

1:01:50

it every goddamn time. Here's a strip

1:01:52

from the nineties where he and Cathy are

1:01:55

talking about their new expensive

1:01:57

hall of useless things. Anodized

1:02:00

aluminum multi lens three B mini

1:02:02

excavation spotlight that will live its

1:02:05

life in the junk drawer with dead batteries,

1:02:07

high tech epoxy finished heavy gage

1:02:09

steel grid hanging unit for home repair

1:02:11

tools that require two carpenters to install

1:02:14

and is now used as a scarf wreck safari

1:02:16

clothes that will never be near a

1:02:19

jungle, aerobic footgear that will

1:02:21

never set foot in an aerobics class deep

1:02:23

sea dive watch that will never get damp.

1:02:26

Keys to a four wheel drive vehicle that will never

1:02:28

experience a hill. Professional designs

1:02:30

magnifying drafting lamp that will never

1:02:32

be in a room with an idea industrial

1:02:34

stainless steel pasta vat that will never see a noodle,

1:02:37

or a group architectural magazines

1:02:39

we don't read, filled

1:02:41

with pictures of furniture we don't like. Ten

1:02:44

function answering machine with an anti tapp

1:02:46

device for a telephone that never rings, twenty

1:02:49

seven time zone international clock in

1:02:51

an indestructible molded alloy briefcase

1:02:53

that will never leave our zip code, financial

1:02:56

strategy software, key to a checkbook that's

1:02:58

lost somewhere under a computer. No one knows how to

1:03:00

work. Art bolster from an art exhibit

1:03:03

we never went to of an artist

1:03:05

we never heard of. Abstract materialism

1:03:07

has arrived. We've moved past

1:03:09

the things we want in need, and are buying things

1:03:11

that have nothing to do with our lives. Oh

1:03:15

boy, guys, Waite isn't

1:03:17

just commenting on materialism

1:03:19

at large. Here, She's referring to how

1:03:21

boomers of different genders were aggressively

1:03:24

targeted by marketers in different ways.

1:03:27

And yeah, what Irving and Cathy

1:03:29

are being pressured to buy are rigidly

1:03:31

binary. But keep in mind what the marketing

1:03:33

from this era sounded like. You

1:03:36

can feel the anticipation in the pit of your

1:03:38

stomach because you're about to take the first

1:03:41

real drive and your new Firebird transamp.

1:03:44

Your pulse quickens as the exhilarating

1:03:46

five Leader of the eight comes to life.

1:03:53

Now the road beckons and freedom

1:03:56

is just a few miles away.

1:04:00

That's safe. That's safe.

1:04:02

That cover girl thing, it

1:04:05

glows, it shows

1:04:10

for skin them. It's fresh and natural. There's

1:04:13

nothing like cover go clean makeup. It's

1:04:15

sacks him up, pure stays fresh, stays

1:04:18

natural, stays that

1:04:20

stays point

1:04:25

taken. Before settling down with Irving,

1:04:27

Cathy also subscribed to every

1:04:30

dating trend in the book. She did

1:04:33

personal ads in the newspaper video

1:04:36

dating, when that searched, in the online

1:04:39

dating when that started in the nineties,

1:04:41

and surprise. She was routinely

1:04:43

frustrated by the constantly changing

1:04:46

landscape of technology. It's

1:04:48

all turned up to an eleven for the comics,

1:04:51

But every one of these things were cultural

1:04:53

trends. The video dating,

1:04:55

especially Oh my God,

1:04:58

Hi, my name's Mike, and it you're sitting there watching

1:05:00

this tape smoking your cigarette, Well, hit

1:05:03

the fast forward button because I don't smoke, and

1:05:05

I don't like people who do smoke. Okay,

1:05:07

Mike Jesus. Even

1:05:10

when Irving isn't in Cathy's life romantically,

1:05:13

he's a tool to comment on boomer men.

1:05:15

Irving has a couple different midlife

1:05:17

crises throughout the strip, and mostly

1:05:20

deals with it through consumption. In

1:05:22

the strip you just heard, he's channeling

1:05:24

insecurity about aging and

1:05:26

his own masculinity by buying

1:05:28

this entirely new hyper masculine

1:05:31

image. He does the same thing again when

1:05:33

the Y two K late nineties era

1:05:35

comes along. He shows up on

1:05:37

Cathy's doorstep with a new persona

1:05:40

yet again, like wearing these sunglasses.

1:05:42

After he's decided that he's going to become an Internet

1:05:45

millionaire, which didn't work, God,

1:05:47

Irving. Here's the strip from It's

1:05:51

the New met Cathy, Millennium man

1:05:53

Net Savvy, HDTV Ready,

1:05:56

Why do K compliant? I got

1:05:58

my lease at eight percent, my mortgage

1:06:00

at six, and my Amazon dot Com

1:06:02

stock at sure

1:06:06

Irving. Another

1:06:08

way that Irving reflected trends among

1:06:10

boomer men was his resistance

1:06:12

to accept Kathy's career, particularly

1:06:15

towards the beginning of the comic. It's his

1:06:17

frustrations with her career that

1:06:19

causes him to have a meltdown and force

1:06:21

a breakup between the two of them. It became

1:06:24

such a popular plot point in their relationship

1:06:26

that it appeared in one of the animated

1:06:28

Kathy specials that aired on CBS

1:06:30

in the late eighties. So the comic

1:06:33

does a pretty solid job of tracking

1:06:35

the consumption habits, the political

1:06:37

apathy, and the emphasis on finding

1:06:40

a job where you can be financially

1:06:42

comfortable over a job you're passionate

1:06:45

about that defined the boomers

1:06:47

as they entered middle age. As I

1:06:49

was talking to people listening to Boomers

1:06:51

described their careers can feel kind

1:06:54

of dissonant. A lot of them were

1:06:56

young feminists who ended up becoming

1:06:58

executives for multi billion dollar

1:07:00

companies. They were against rigid beauty

1:07:03

standards, but also worked to enforce

1:07:05

them. They were strong proponents that

1:07:07

their daughters not be harassed in the workplace,

1:07:10

but sometimes recalled their own harassment

1:07:12

with defensiveness in favor of

1:07:15

the harasser. The Clinton years

1:07:17

gave way to the George W. Bush

1:07:19

years, and Kathy Strips didn't comment

1:07:21

quite as often on the issues of the

1:07:23

day. By this time, Cathy was very settled

1:07:26

in her job and was trying to navigate

1:07:28

if that notion that she should put

1:07:30

her career over all else was

1:07:33

actually what she ever wanted. We

1:07:35

also get some commentary on aging,

1:07:38

and of course, an obligatory nine eleven

1:07:40

remembrance strip. Throughout these years,

1:07:43

the cast of the Kathy Strip navigates

1:07:45

their world and problems with

1:07:47

the same attitude that a generation

1:07:49

of white Americans that didn't feel the need to

1:07:51

worry about politics did until

1:07:54

late in the strips run in the mid to late

1:07:57

two thousands, where the cracks

1:07:59

in the Boomer legacy began to show

1:08:02

hard. Kathy in Irving get

1:08:04

married in two thousand five, and a lot

1:08:06

of strips are devoted to their trying

1:08:09

to find a house together, right in

1:08:11

the middle of a housing bubble that would prompt

1:08:13

the Great Recession. Here they are talking

1:08:15

to a real estate agent in the mid two thousand's.

1:08:18

For Baby Boomers, the biggest challenge in

1:08:20

house hunting is, of course, the

1:08:23

factor, the factor entitlement,

1:08:27

what you think you're entitled to versus what

1:08:29

you can actually afford. I

1:08:32

mean, she's good.

1:08:35

And when the recession hit the US,

1:08:37

it hit the Kathy Strip as well. Because

1:08:40

nothing makes one act like

1:08:42

the realization that the comfortable world

1:08:44

they grew up in and took for granted could be completely

1:08:47

dismantled by a couple of Wall Street buck

1:08:49

boys in the space of a couple of months. This

1:08:52

is a strip from two thousand and eight featuring

1:08:54

Kathy panicking as she looks at

1:08:56

the news in the papers and on TV

1:08:59

on a emloyment. Articles are eating away my

1:09:01

sense of security. Aging baby

1:09:03

boomer stories are eating away at my illusion

1:09:06

of youth, and every other thing

1:09:08

I see on TV is eating away at my peace

1:09:10

of mind, my trust, my hope, and

1:09:12

my schwadeviva in general.

1:09:15

The strip ended its run in papers in two

1:09:17

thousand and ten, so we don't get a

1:09:19

full look at the cultures hard turn

1:09:21

on the boomer generation. What we do

1:09:23

get is a big chunk of their journey.

1:09:26

Kathy begins as an aspiring

1:09:29

women's liber and ends as

1:09:31

a woman who postponed marriage and kids

1:09:33

for a career. She hadn't been fulfilled

1:09:35

by in the way she'd expected, with no

1:09:38

savings because of the mass consumption

1:09:40

that the culture had encouraged and sometimes

1:09:42

demanded, and was living in a world

1:09:45

that her generation had irrevocably

1:09:47

damaged. Act no

1:09:51

number of Kathy comics over twelve

1:09:53

thousand that I read to be exact could

1:09:56

endear me to the Boomer generation's

1:09:58

legacy, as it is unquestionably

1:10:01

a bleak one. Boomer policies have

1:10:03

a dark legacy. They're the creators

1:10:06

and purveyors of triple down economics.

1:10:08

They are the accruers of massive

1:10:11

national debt. They are pushers of the war

1:10:13

on drugs. The Boomer block at

1:10:15

large routinely voted against taking

1:10:17

action on climate change and still

1:10:20

do. They eroded national safety

1:10:22

nets like social Security and Medicare,

1:10:25

and repeatedly failed to tax the

1:10:27

massively wealthy, allowing mega

1:10:29

billionaires like Bezos, Musk

1:10:31

and Gates Gate keep wealth and

1:10:33

privatize the ability for the average person

1:10:36

to live. And today we have

1:10:38

our fifth consecutive Boomer president

1:10:41

in office, long after the center

1:10:43

liberal policies of that generation have

1:10:45

revealed themselves to be largely

1:10:47

capitalistic and unsustainable.

1:10:50

These policies aren't the fault of any one

1:10:52

Boomer, particularly ones that don't

1:10:55

hold massive influence, power, and

1:10:57

capital. But what I did notice in researching

1:10:59

this episode was this there was

1:11:01

a cultural shift in the Boomer generation

1:11:04

to the well being and survival of the

1:11:06

individual and proving oneself

1:11:08

through labor and consumption that had

1:11:11

a net harm. Most boomers I spoke

1:11:13

with didn't choose a job they were necessarily

1:11:15

passionate about, but one that would allow

1:11:17

for them to thrive in a society

1:11:20

that was structured like this. Kathy strips

1:11:22

reflect this. We know that the character is

1:11:24

proud and aware that she's good at

1:11:26

her job, but at no point are

1:11:28

we led to believe that Product Testing

1:11:31

Services Incorporated is something

1:11:33

that she's passionate about. As

1:11:35

Jill Philip Povic explains in her book,

1:11:38

the millennial generation is far

1:11:40

more likely to take a pay cut in order

1:11:42

to do something that they feel good about. Like

1:11:44

a lot of people from her generation, the

1:11:46

Kathy character was trying her best to live

1:11:49

up to what she was told her potential was,

1:11:51

at first because of the Women's liberation movement,

1:11:53

but eventually just to keep up.

1:11:56

It is within Gen X, Millennials

1:11:59

and Gen z's power to vote

1:12:01

boomers out of office, but it

1:12:03

is a slow and arduous process.

1:12:06

Congress is currently sixty eight percent

1:12:08

boomers, the House of Representatives is

1:12:10

fifty three percent Boomers, so all those

1:12:13

of voting numbers exist for boomers

1:12:15

to not be in power. And this doesn't

1:12:17

even take voter suppression into account.

1:12:20

Jesus Christ, are boomers

1:12:22

still holding a lot of power for

1:12:25

a generation of their sorry

1:12:27

age? And if any one of you boomers

1:12:29

launches into my mentioned saying I'm

1:12:31

being aged on this point, I will launch

1:12:34

myself into the sun with a circus cannon.

1:12:36

For this large and complicated

1:12:39

generation, Kathy Comics

1:12:41

provide a pretty solid mirror.

1:12:43

So I want to close this episode with another

1:12:46

classic strip from the nineties. It features

1:12:48

Kathy in her office, sitting in front of

1:12:50

a blank sheet of paper in this hulking

1:12:52

early desktop computer, with her

1:12:55

hands on her temples and her tongue out. She is

1:12:57

alone, thinking and panicking.

1:13:00

I can't believe I'm here? Why

1:13:02

am I here? What am I doing? What

1:13:05

was I thinking? Is this? It? Is

1:13:08

this? Am I going to spend the rest of my

1:13:10

life in this office? Am I worthy?

1:13:13

Aren't I superior? What about

1:13:16

my big dreams? Who am I?

1:13:18

Why?

1:13:24

This is the essence of Cathy Comics.

1:13:27

Something that looks like it's prosperous

1:13:30

or a sign of progress from the outside

1:13:32

women in the workplace, but

1:13:34

the interior reality is panicked

1:13:37

and insecure, falling short

1:13:39

of what she thought life was going to be. Like

1:13:42

boomers as a generation were

1:13:44

given a lot, those in power,

1:13:46

squandered it to the benefit of select

1:13:48

few, and not as much changed

1:13:51

as many would like to think. Like most

1:13:53

generations, white boomers tend to deflect

1:13:55

the blame for this falling short on

1:13:58

younger generations and marginalized people

1:14:00

instead of scrutinizing the systems

1:14:02

and power structures that enabled it. And

1:14:05

oh my god, I really hope I don't listen back

1:14:07

to this episode from a climate bunker in

1:14:09

a decade and think, Oh no, my generation

1:14:11

did the same fucking thing. I guess we'll see.

1:14:13

Kathy guys White showed the daily life

1:14:16

of a working boomer woman trying

1:14:18

to have it all, and how having it all

1:14:20

was this myth that both offered

1:14:23

women more options and ways to

1:14:25

be than ever before, while also

1:14:27

presenting a whole new slew of

1:14:29

impossible expectations to make her

1:14:31

feel bad. While definitely not a

1:14:33

comprehensive one, it's a lighthearted

1:14:36

chronicle of a generation that did wrong

1:14:38

by their own and by their children's

1:14:40

generation, and the periods of

1:14:42

mass consumerism that distracted

1:14:44

from cultural moments that weren't harnessed

1:14:47

for social change, because while the Boomers

1:14:49

may have come of age in the hippie days

1:14:51

of focusing on the collective, they

1:14:54

became a generation of individuals

1:14:58

fully embracing good individualism

1:15:01

that prioritized consumption, optimization,

1:15:04

looking and being the right

1:15:07

way over all else. They

1:15:09

lived in a society,

1:15:12

and it's here in this struggle to look

1:15:15

the right way, both in fashion

1:15:18

and with her body image, that the Kathy

1:15:20

Strips might spend the majority

1:15:22

of their time panicking in the

1:15:25

changing room, trying every crash

1:15:27

diet under the sun, and failing

1:15:29

to be cool. That's who the Kathy

1:15:31

character is, and the story it tells

1:15:34

was reflected in the lives of millions

1:15:36

of American women. So you know what's happening,

1:15:38

right Cathy Wicked Bodies,

1:15:42

Bodies Baby. Next week

1:15:45

on ac Cast, I

1:15:50

want to send an extra special

1:15:52

thank you to the women who share their time

1:15:54

and their experiences with me for this

1:15:56

episode. We're going to be hearing more from them

1:15:58

and others later in this series, so

1:16:01

thank you so much for trusting me with your

1:16:03

stories. Back Cast is

1:16:05

an I Heart Radio production hosted, written,

1:16:07

and researched by me Jamie Loftus.

1:16:09

The show is executive produced by the wonderful

1:16:12

Sophie Lichterman, edited by the wonderful

1:16:14

Isaac Taylor. Music is from Zoe Bladed

1:16:17

and The Slapper That is Our themes

1:16:19

song Keep the Compliments Coming

1:16:22

comes from Brad Dinkert. Voices

1:16:24

who heard today include Ben Loftus,

1:16:27

my brother, I'm home for the summer

1:16:29

and my whole family is working on this. Miles

1:16:31

Gray is Irving and Mr Pinkley, Melissa

1:16:33

Lozada Oliva is Andrea and

1:16:36

Jackie. Michelle Johnson is our

1:16:38

Kathy. We'll see you next week.