No one really expected that Joan Baez, an octogenarian symbol of the 1960s counterculture, would be a fan of Donald Trump. In a recent interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, Baez expounded on her Trump loathing for about 40 minutes.
Baez, to her credit, seems remarkably alert for 84 years of age. Baez makes me feel my own 57 years less, when I consider that she released her ninth studio album the year I was born.
But there is nothing terribly new or innovative in the Wallace-Baez interview. Baez is basically [yet another] retired Celebrity with Left-of-Center Opinions, and her denunciations of Trump are the standard boilerplate. Baez has had an impressive musical career, but she’s never held office. She isn’t a political scientist. So what, exactly, is the point here?
The point seems to be that Nicolle Wallace (who is too young to remember Baez’s heyday) has always dreamed of interviewing Joan Baez. I get it. I’m also a Gen Xer with Baby Boomer entertainment heroes. If I were an interviewer for a major news outlet, I would jump at the opportunity to interview Mick Jagger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, or the late Ozzy Osbourne, among others.
But whatever we need right now, it isn’t a return to the 1960s. Most of our current social ills—drug abuse, the disintegration of the family, inner-city crime—can be traced to the cockamamie ideas of that long-ago decade. Let the 1960s stay where they belong: a half-century behind us.
-ET