Mayor Pete Buttigieg continues to prove why he is the preferred candidate among over-educated rich liberals in élite coastal enclaves. He's crushing it, for example, in the "boat shoe" strongholds of Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Cape Cod. Among black voters, not so much.
Buttigieg is the quintessential embodiment of the obnoxious grad student, brimming with excess confidence and useless talents. He's the 37-year-old mayor of the 4th-largest city in the 17th-largest state in the country and believes he has what it takes to be president. He's minimally conversant in a bunch of obscure languages. He won't stop talking about the time he studied abroad in Afghanistan. He plays a bunch of instruments, including the didgeridoo, because of course he does.
The Washington Post reports on one of the overlooked "fun facts" displayed about the candidates during the most recent Democratic debate in Detroit:
Last week’s debates taught us a little something about the Democrats who are running for president, like that Joe Biden doesn’t understand texting and that Marianne Williamson knows a "dark psychic force" when she sees one.
Less noticed, though, was this revelation: Pete Buttigieg plays the didgeridoo. Yes, folks, it’s true. That nugget of insight into the 37-year-old’s personality came courtesy of CNN’s rundown of the fun facts that you "didn’t know" about the 20 candidates who appeared at the network’s two debates. The South Bend mayor plays "piano, guitar and several instruments including the Didgeridoo — a long wooden trumpet believed to have originated by Indigenous Australians in northern Australia," CNN reported, although it left out the part about the instrument also being the choice of long-haired guys who hang out in dorm stairwells sharing the "skills" they picked up on their semester abroad.
While the didgeridoo might be an, er, unconventional choice of wind instrument for a small-town politician, having a musical bulletpoint on a politician’s personal résumé is not. Keep in mind: These folks want to appear as normal as possible and musical talents is a surefire great ice breaker.
Sure, announcing one's proficiency on the didgeridoo, is a great way to appear normal in certain environments, such as the Brooklyn flophouse where Beto O'Rourke "found himself," or at a Hamptons fundraiser. Almost anywhere else, you're more likely to come across as a PhD fail son still living in mom and dad's basement, nattering on about the screenplay you've basically already written in your head about a group of thirty-something poets who get lost on a camping trip and find beauty in the unrelenting clutches of nature.