Listening to Bob Seger’s 1974 “U.M.C. (Upper Middle Class)” in 2020

I first heard U.M.C. (Upper Middle Class) on the Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band’s 1976’s double album ‘Live’ Bullet. I likely was listening it to on my mid-1980s Yamaha CD player in my undergraduate college days. I recently relistened to the album, and it still provides an excellent serotonin boost.

While UMC isn’t one of Seger’s more popular songs, a close listen to it today reveals a lot about how class politics has disappeared from the Democratic Party, why it’s so hard for cisgender, straight men my age to adjust to egalitarian norms and how wealth distribution has changed.

The song begins “I wanna be a lawyer, doctor or professor, a member of the UMC.” The narrator imagines that such professionals will have all kinds of luxuries and amenities, facilitated by “all the money I can see.” While that of course wasn’t completely true in 1974, it’s far less so in 2020, especially for professors.

The narrator is jealous of his wife and considers his presumably female secretary sexually accessible.

I want a … private eye for tailing my wife if she’s a bit too free.

I want a … secretary pretty, who’ll take dictation on my knee.

When I was listening to this song in the 1980s, it never occurred to me that there was anything objectionable to a man desiring his secretary to be an attractive female who would provide office and sexual labor. Only many years of education and listening to feminists have allowed me to understand that misogynistic stereotypes about predominantly female professions such as nursing, flight attendants, residential real estate agents, teachers, librarians and secretaries were ways to restrict women’s power and control their labor.

Another wonderful song from my youth now makes me feel like an incipient incel mass murderer. And, I could really go on and on about how popular culture reinforced the cis male privilege I have instinctually supported and benefitted from most of my life.

The complete lack of concern for others’ human rights is illustrated by the narrator’s unironic pledge not to care too much:

Don’t want to have to ration
A thing with anyone but me
And if there’s war or famine
Promise I’ll examine
The details if they’re on TV

In 1974, Seger asserts that the UMC, being an opponent of the working class whose cause liberals would champion, would necessarily support the Republicans.

I’ll pretend to be liberal but I’ll still support the GOP,
As part of the UMC

Since Bill Clinton was elected in 1996 and more likely much earlier, the Democratic Party stopped being a pro-labor party, partly because the Republicans had made cultural inroads into white working class voters through championing racism behind the mask of “law and order” and misogyny behind the mask of “family values.” Also, fewer and fewer working class Americans were part of organized labor movements.

A great indictment of the Democratic Party is that, in the 2020 Presidential Election, it is focusing on enhancing its appeal to white college educated suburbanites, i.e. the U.M.C.

Here are the lyrics in full:

I wanna be a lawyer
Doctor or professor
A member of the UMC
I want an air conditioner
Cottage on the river
And all the money I can see
I wanna drive a Lincoln
Spend my evenings drinking
The very best burgundy
I want a yacht for sailing
Private eye for tailing
My wife if she’s a bit too free
I’ve been told ever since a boy
That’s what one aught to be
A part of the UMC
I want a pool to swim in
Fancy suits to dress in
Some stock in GM and GE
An office in the city
Secretary pretty
Who’ll take dictation on my knee
I want a paid vacation
Don’t want to have to ration
A thing with anyone but me
And if there’s war or famine
Promise I’ll examine
The details if they’re on TV
I’ll pretend to be liberal but I’ll still support the GOP,
As part of the UMC
I wanna be a lawyer
Doctor or professor
A member of the UMC