In our morning check-in phone call, Steve noted that David Brooks did not steal his column from this blog today. We’ve been joking that Brooks is hijacking ideas on this blog for his column.

Today, Brooks has his social conservative hat on and is analyzing pop song lyrics from Pink and Avril Lavigne. He says that these songs are entirely new.

If you put the songs together, you see they’re about the same sort of
character: a character who would have been socially unacceptable in a
megahit pop song 10, let alone 30 years ago…

Now young people face a social frontier of their own. They hit
puberty around 13 and many don’t get married until they’re past 30.
That’s two decades of coupling, uncoupling, hooking up, relationships
and shopping around. This period isn’t a transition anymore. It’s a
sprawling life stage, and nobody knows the rules.

Once, young
people came a-calling as part of courtship. Then they had dating and
going steady. But the rules of courtship have dissolved. They’ve been
replaced by ambiguity and uncertainty. Cellphones, Facebook and text
messages give people access to hundreds of “friends.” That only
increases the fluidity, drama and anxiety.

The heroines of these
songs handle this wide-open social frontier just as confidently and
cynically as Bogart handled the urban frontier. These iPhone Lone
Rangers are completely inner-directed; they don’t care what you think.
They know exactly what they want; they don’t need anybody else.

Of course it’s all a fantasy, as much as “The Big Sleep” or “High
Plains Drifter.” Young people still need intimacy and belonging more
than anything else. But the pose is the product of something real — a
response to this new stage of formless premarital life, and the
anxieties it produces.

In America we have a little problem with
self and society. We imagine we can overcome the anxieties of society
by posing romantic lone wolves. The angry young women on the radio
these days are not the first pop stars to romanticize independence for
audiences desperate for companionship.

Maybe. Or maybe this songs are for strong girls. Ones that are rebelling against the pink explosion of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and the Olson twins. Pink is a big boned girl who snarls at the camera. She’s more Billy Idol than Barbie. Avril Lavigne wears neckties and sweatbands rather than push-up bras and babydoll dresses. And both of them are married.