Ep 243: The Authenticity Affect (Part I) — Whistlestop Tours, Smarm, and the Art of Channeling 'Folk'

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

This is Citations Needed with Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.

Nima Shirazi (0:08)

Welcome to Citations Needed, a podcast on the media power PR and the history of bullshit. I am Nima Shirazi.

Adam Johnson (0:15)

I'm Adam Johnson.

Nima Shirazi (0:17)

Welcome to our premiere episode of season 10 of Citations Needed. We've been doing this now for nine plus years. We began back in July of 2017 If you can believe it, Adam, the Citations Needed Archive is now quite long. We've been doing this nine full seasons. This is now, as I said, our 10th season. We are so thrilled to be able to keep doing the show. And that is because of the ongoing generous support of our incredible listeners. Yes, that is you hearing this right now. We are able to do the show because of your support, because you listen and share and like the show and review the show, but most importantly, because you share it with your friends and also because you support us through patreon.com. So thank you all so much for your ongoing support. Of course, for those who are not currently supporting the show, please do consider doing that. That would be wonderful. We would love that. That can help us keep going for another nine or 10 seasons. You can do that through patreon.com/citationsneededpodcast.

We are 100% listener funded. We have no ads, no commercials. We don't have any corporate or nonprofit sponsors. We don't get foundation money. We are able to do the show because of the ongoing generous support of listeners like you.

Adam Johnson (1:29)

Yes. Thank you for all the support throughout these years. We're excited to start season 10 If you haven't already, please do go to our patreon and help support it there. It keeps the episodes themselves free and the show sustainable.

Nima Shirazi (1:47)

Bob Dole ready to listen to Real Americans reported the Associated Press in 1996 Obama reaches out to Real Americans, stated the news agency again in 2014

This senator has a very Midwestern plan to save the Democrats, announced Politico, speaking of Michigan Democrat Elisa Slotkin this year, 2026

Adam Johnson (2:13)

When election season approaches, whether for the midterms or the general, it seems there's a steady supply of candidates and big name pundits who declare that we have to listen to real American people. This usually translates to a tour of farms, county fairs, Walmarts, VA halls, and the quintessentially authentic and unimpeachable small town diner. These are places we are told that elected officials and candidates can sit down with ordinary people, real Americans, and hear about their day-to-day problems and struggles and reflect on what these real Americans truly want in order to, of course, better help them.

Nima Shirazi (2:48)

It's common knowledge that states like Iowa, the long-time first to vote in presidential primaries, and Michigan, a so-called battleground or swing state, are priorities for political candidates. But why do media insist that there's some seemingly inscrutable mythos to them and other pastoral non-coastal settings? Why are we to believe that small business owners in Indiana or farmers in Minnesota possess some unique and sacred knowledge, wisdom, or value?

Why is this the ultimate image of authenticity for politicians? And where does it come from? And how do campaign apparatuses instrumentalize notions of ordinary people to advance the same old corporate agendas?

Adam Johnson (3:31)

On today's episode, part one of our season 10 opening three-part series on performative authenticity, we'll break down this simple country lawyer routine, examining how it creates a hollow sense of folksiness informed not by genuine economic populism or a sense of what real hardship is, but by superficial down-home aesthetics, manufactures vague and notions of real America, and launders the preferred agenda of wealthy donors as the organic preferences of Ma and Pa Heartland.

Nima Shirazi (4:00)

Later on the show, we'll be speaking with John Patrick Leary, a public school social studies teacher in Philadelphia, contributor to outlets like Teen Vogue, The Baffler and The New Republic, and author of the books Keywords, The New Language of Capitalism, and Keywords for Capitalism, Power, Society and Politics, both of which were published by Haymarket Books. He's also the author of A Cultural History of Underdevelopment, Latin America in the US. Imagination, which was published by the University of Virginia Press.

John Patrick Leary (4:31)

It stands in for something or it sort of substitutes for something, which in this case, the people would be a kind of good substitute for folks or the masses would be a kind of old fashioned class specific substitute for it. But folks is a good one for a Midwestern politician because it's a way of alluding to something like the people without invoking a class antagonism, while also kind of allowing for in our terminally individualistic society for a kind of multiplicity. You're the folks, but you're an individual member of the folks. You're not invoked as like one of the masses.