Comey's Incongruity

So the weekend's big news is that James Comey has outed hinself as a Swiftie, which is to say a fan of Taylor Swift. I just haven't been following this phenomenon, and I did some quick research to bring myself up to date. Accoreding to Wikipedia,

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her autobiographical songwriting and artistic reinventions have made her a cultural icon of the 21st century. She is the highest-grossing live music artist, the wealthiest female musician, and one of the best-selling music artists of all time.

I watched a couple of her routines on YouTube, and on one hand, they seem like something recycled from the last century, maybe Joni Mitchell meets Madonna, but on the other, although she's 35, an age when the musical greats of my generation were already dead, her persona is more like an angry, disillusioned 14-year-old. This incongruity seems to be the key to why James Comey is a Swiftie, he's from an older age group affecting the attitudes of people much younger.

James Comey, born December 14, 1960, is a baby boomer, a generation usually defined as born in the years between 1946 and 1964. If you check the Taylor Swift demographics chart at the top of this post (click on the image for a larger copy), baby boomers are onlyh 23% of Swift's audience. Heck, if you grew up with Janis Joplin, Cass Elliot, or Grace Slick, Taylor Swift is going to look like a borrowed AI creation of some sort. So that's anotherr incongruity with Comey.

Another incongruity is household income. We don't know much about Comey's current net worth, but according to Wikipedia,

In August 2005, it was announced that Comey would enter the private sector, becoming the general counsel and senior vice president for Lockheed Martin, the U.S. Department of Defense's largest contractor. Comey's tenure took effect on October 1, 2005, serving in that capacity until June 2, 2010, when he announced he would leave Lockheed Martin to join the senior management committee at Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment management firm. Comey received a three million dollar payout from Bridgewater. His net worth was estimated at 14 million dollars in 2013.

As FBI Director after 2013, he appears to have earned something between $180,000 and $199,000 per year, less than he would have earned at Lockheed Martin or Bridgewater, but still well into the $100,000+ bracket, which makes up only 25% of Swiftie demographics. In other categories, though, he's a good Swiftie: Democrat, white, and apparently suburban, living in northern Virginia.

The really odd thing is that he's all dressed up in yesterday's video, suit and tie, recent haircut, clean-shaven -- and although he complains about "our elderly, makeup-covered President", it's hard to avoid thinking Comey's wearing makeup for this appearance as well. And his expression is strangely glib.

This is yet another incongruity: he's dressed as a fully responsible and mature adult, presumably addressing a like-minded audience, but he's using an eight-year-old's vocabularty:

Like a lot of you, I struggle with how to stand up to bullies without letting their meanness infect me and change me. . . . There are far more decent, honest, kind people in America than there are mean jerks.

. . . Don’t get me wrong—we have our jerks, millions of them, you may have noticed. In particular, there’s a stunning coarseness and ugliness in the Republican Party today.

. . . Of course, we need to stand up to jerks and defend what matters.

. . . Taylor Swift . . . sang a song about this topic, asking: Why you gotta be so mean? And she spoke directly to the nasty people: I bet you got pushed around. Somebody made you cold. But the cycle ends right now, because you can’t lead me down that road.

If he's gonna talk down to us this way, he should be wearing a sweater like Mister Rogers, not wearing a serious daddy suit. His chief objection to Trump is apparently he's gotta be so mean. Mean to whom? Well, apparently to James Comey, who informed observers suggest should be preparing himself to be indicted. But that means he should be talking full time to other guys in serious daddy suits who would be telling him to stay off social media, keep a low profile, and ponder his defense strategy.

This suggests to me that Comey lacks any situational awareness. It reminds me in many ways of true crime shows like Court Cam, where people appear before the judge wearing T-shirts with cuss words on them, and the exasperated judge admonishes them that they have to be conscious of where they are. Something basic is missing here.

There's also the peculiar attitude of entitlement that seems to appear in Taylor Swift as well, the teeny-bopper who suddenly realizes that not all the boys are sincere, and she's over-the-top angry that they aren't -- except it's a 35-year-old woman who's actually making these shrieks of rage. Again, something's missing.

Comey in his serious daddy suit should be in serious daddy meetings in serious daddy meeting rooms at serious daddy law firms right now, and instead he's coming out as a Swiftie like a disillusioned 14-year-old. This doesn't bode well.