Well, how about that? Seems that her little throwaway pull-quote from the UK Guardian the other day didn’t go over that well! Remember this?
If she had been able to vote in the US election, she would have plumped for Donald Trump, she says. “I would have voted for him because, even though he was offensive, he seemed honest. Do you want straight or polite? Not that you shouldn’t be able to have both. If I were voting, I just don’t want bullshit. I would have voted for a feeling that it was transparent. And politics has a reputation of not being that, right?”
Well, she was right about that last sentence. Politics does have a reputation for dishonesty. And a truly honest politician, who is both straight AND polite, is a rare fowl indeed.
But Donnie Drumpf? The man has blustered his entire way through life, and shows no sign of ever being real. He lies about everything, from his ethnicity, to his grades, to his business acumen, to his sex life. He’s lied to the FBI. Even his hair is a tower of bullshit! Just because someone “seems honest”, doesn’t mean that they are.
And frankly, the same could be said about Shania Twain herself. The woman is as carefully crafted for maximum media appeal as she could be. Her name, like Donnie’s, isn’t quite real; her surname is her stepfather’s, and her first name is actually Eilleen. Her real father left when she was two, and one can’t blame her for wanting a more solid identity than she had. But she was quite content to let Canadians believe she was Native, when in fact she isn’t. She hasn’t been a Canadian citizen for about a quarter of a century now; she lives in Switzerland so she doesn’t have to pay our taxes on her multimillion-dollar income. But she’s still quite content to say she’s Canadian, even though she’s contributed little, materially speaking, to her country of origin. She married her producer, who glitzed up her image to the point where little Eilleen from Timmins was no longer visible under all the vinyl, fake fur, and rhinestones; you could only barely call her a “country” singer. And when he left her for her (now former) best friend, she married the ex-friend’s ex-husband, who was just as lost and bewildered and devastated as she. Probably brought back unwelcome memories of being a kid whose life was far from secure. Little wonder that she said this about her divorce:
“I would never choose for my son’s family to be broken,” she says instantly. “I would be one of those people who would keep my marriage together for my child … I tried to keep Mutt.” She says it goes back to her own childhood. “Look at my situation. My parents could have killed each other. Maybe we would have been better off in foster homes, but I decided not to turn my family in, many times. There is something in me that says a family should stay together.”
Even if it’s for the worst? Even if your stepdad is sexually abusing you and beating up your mom? Even if your son’s father is cheating and lying and slowly breaking down the both of you? That’s your idea of an “unbroken” family, Shania?
Little wonder that she thought Donnie “seemed honest” to her. She had too few honest examples in her life, no reliable frame of reference to judge by. If she did, she might say (as I do) that if she had to vote in the 2016 US election, she’d have picked Bernie Sanders, who actually IS honest. And who has just as consistently been on the right side of history as Donnie has been on the wrong side of…well, everything.
That “something in me” is saying a lot of bullshit things. And some of them, alas, fell out of her mouth at an inopportune moment. She’s apologized for them now, but the damage is done. Oh well…I’m not a fan of hers, and never have been. No skin off my nose.
And when I want to listen to country music, I’ll listen to someone who always keeps it real:
He’d have torn Donnie Drumpf a new one, and very rightly so.
