Who’s Janis Joplin Now?

One of the most popular posts I’ve written here was for last year’s 1966 Game. It was called Who’s Grace Slick Now. (The answer was Ann Coulter. Read the piece to find out why.)

Now we’re going to play a similar game with an icon from 1967, Janis Joplin.

Joplin was a good singer and notorious druggie. (Cause of death in 1970 was a combination of heroin and whiskey.) She was a troubled soul, a young girl from Port Arthur, Texas who never felt understood or validated, and who buried herself in the party life rather than face her strengths and weaknesses.

Joplin was also a political symbol. You say Janis Joplin and people of a certain age will all shake their heads, saying "what a waste." She was a symbol of the sybaritic lifestyle, the excess which voters rejected in 1968 and continue to reject, in their rhetoric and their actions. "Don’t be like Janis Joplin", parents would say, even when the kids were saying "Janis who?"

What you read above is a cartoon version of Joplin’s life and times. I know this. The point is that, in terms of politics, its cycles, the myths and values which drive power, the cartoon counts for more than the reality. People become symbols of larger trends, and at the end of a generational thesis they come to embody all the forces the majority is seeking to reject.

So who’s Janis Joplin now?

Pretty easy, huh?

Like Joplin, Paris Hilton has a single talent (no, she’s only average at that), in this case a talent for publicity. There are other rich, spoiled heiresses partying-down all over the world. Hers is the name in the paper, and that’s deliberate on her part.

More important, this week has created a perfect storm of publicity against Hilton, with people across the political spectrum — even people who don’t care about celebrities — really wanting to make her cry.

Even more interesting is how liberals are using the Paris Hilton story to attack Republicans. I don’t know the woman’s politics, or even if she has any. By that token, I don’t remember seeing Janis Joplin in a voting booth either.

But here’s the Atlantic calling the GOP Paris Hilton’s party. Here’s Firedoglake on Paris Hilton’s Republican Family Values. I bet Paris Hilton votes Republican, adds Newsbloggers.  (I bet she doesn’t vote.) Democrats have also relabeled the inheritance tax, which Republicans called the "death tax," the "Paris Hilton Tax."

This may be unfair. It was unfair to associate Joplin with people like Eugene McCarthy as well. But it does resonate. Paris Hilton has come to symbolize a host of policies she did not create — the advantages given wealth across the board in this decade.

Politically she is very useful.

As Joplin was to Nixon.

And for more, read this. It’s summer. You’ll have fun. Really. Consider it penance for all the time you spent here.