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June 01, 2006
YFLMD* - Youth Fight, Love Marriage Defense?
In case you missed it, the National Review threw logic to the wind (as well as throwing political/social intentions of artists under the train) in a feature where it named the 50 best conservative songs.
Look... politics aside, the Democrats have the run of the creative mill. No one should be denying that these days. Perhaps, for the Democrats, there are too many artists and not enough leaders... I covered the RNC for my magazine. The celebrity quotient there was Ron Silver... and Ron Silver (Jesus, his IMDB.com profile even mentions his anomalous political affiliation!).
Anyway, representing your conservative staples in the Top 50: The Who, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones... U2. Evoking Dr. Evil (as I so rarely do), Riiiiight.
The writer, John R. Miller, gets off to a pallid start.
On first glance, rock ’n’ roll music isn’t very conservative. It doesn’t fare much better on second or third glance (or listen), either.
That's the point where most writers would take the ball home and say, "This assignment is untenable."
But not NR: online ridicule awaits.
And, oh, WTF? The New York Times republishes it all, without any context. Nice abdication of editorial control, boys. Or is that aggregation?
Here are my favorite reactions:
Next week Hypebot will be publishing a Top 50,000 Liberal Songs with a surprisingly similar Top 10.
As shown by the
National Review, it takes only a few ingredients to turn that rebel rock song you've been pissing your parents off with into a down-home paean to the redistribution of a nation's wealth into the hands of degenerate fatcats. All it takes is the following:
1. Extreme cognitive dissonance.
2. The willingness to ignore anything fact-esque.
3. The ability to discard the truth of an author's intent while savoring the delicate morsel of truthiness you manage to construct.
* Giant Drag song title - I'm not going to give you what the acronym really means. Listen to it yourself.
Posted by Keith O'Brien at June 1, 2006 05:37 PM
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Comments
What, nothing from the Ramones "Rocket to Russia"?
How about a Wesley Willis song proving that mentally ill people can do just fine without government funded health care? Somewhere Toby Keith is pissed.
Posted by: Jeff at June 2, 2006 10:03 AM
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