But again, an AWESOME performance, with backup by Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea, Suzy Bogguss, Pam Tillis, and Trisha Yearwood. Worthy of the "guilty pleasure" label.
Sunday, June 13, 2021
MUSIC VIDEO AND COMMENTARY: "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," by Mary Chapin Carpenter -- TOTAL FEMINIST FAIL.
The performance is incredible, but the song is hilarious: A liberal takes a commercial from umpteen years before, uses its tagline that NOBODY took seriously to make a feminist/"Women's Lib" point, then has the WIFE leave her husband and break up their kids' family when he's done nothing but give her a good life--and then have her end up in "the typing pool at minimum wage."
TOTAL FEMINIST FAIL, FOLKS! When you're creating a scenario to promote a social point, don't have things turn out bad. At least give her a lesbian lover or put her in some late-in-life professional career where she uses her dormant BA. I won't attest to her co-writer's performance, but Carpenter as the writer outsmarts herself.
So the writing AND the character are feminist fails.
BTW, the song says, "For fifteen years she had a job and not one raise in pay." She was a homemaker. Her "raise in pay" was the family and likely-improved lifestyle from her husband's promotions. (He seems to have traveled at this job, which means he probably didn't clerk down at the Piggly Wiggly.) That's how that works.