There was a very interesting article about the blog Culture11 in the WashingtonMonthly a few weeks ago (it was the source of a quote about Big Hollywood that John liked a lot). The short story is that a few non-wingnut conservatives decided to start a conservative blog that would attempt to deal with cultural issues in a non-crazy way, founded an aesthetically successful blog (I thought the content on the blog was excellent for a conservative blog), and then failed to find investors or much of an audience, surprise, surprise. And that’s where Big Hollywood comes in:
It was a grimly funny coincidence that around the time Culture11’s financial well was running dry, another Web site sharing its subject matter debuted to much greater fanfare in the right-wing media than Kuo’s project ever received: Big Hollywood, an entertainment and politics blog created by Andrew Breitbart, a conservative Los Angeles–based Internet entrepreneur who helped launch both the Drudge Report and Huffington Post. Beneath an angry vermillion-colored banner, the blog offers recurring features like the “Celebutard of the Week”—tracking the latest vapidly liberal political utterances from the likes of Cher—and clips of the best conservative moments in film interspersed with rote breaking news from the entertainment industry.
The whole article is worth a read. Now, while I support efforts like Culture11 in theory, it’s hard not to note that the Tom Wolfe article that inspired Culture11 was nothing more than a high-brow version of what goes on on Big Hollywood:
Wolfe had gone to the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein’s cocktail party, watched Park Avenue’s finest flatter themselves by sharing hors d’oeurves with Black Panthers, and wrote about it in scathing detail, first in New York magazine—the cover featured three white socialites in glittery cocktail dresses with raised fists—and later in Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. In doing so, Friedersdorf believed, Wolfe had made a far stronger case for conservatism than the collected works of L. Brent Bozell.
Is there anything more to conservative cultural critiques than mockery of liberal celebrities? I suppose they also have those list of “greatest conservative movies” and “greatest conservative songs“, but that’s always seemed like an exercise in futility, like assembling the list of greatest white soul singers, where before you start you’re already beat.
Update. Everyone seems to be having a good time making fun of the Great Conservative Songs list, so I thought I’d bring you this blast from the past from George Will.
I may be the only 43-year-old American so out of the swim that I do not even know what marijuana smoke smells like. Perhaps at the concert I was surrounded by controlled substances. Certainly I was surrounded by orderly young adults earnestly — and correctly — insisting that Springsteen is a wholesome cultural portent.
[…]I have not got a clue about Springsteen’s politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: “Born in the U.S.A.!”
Update #2. In my view, this is the greatest conservative song ever.
(via)
used to be disgusted
Back in the 90s, conservatives were still making a big deal about high culture — you know, T.S. Eliot & co. Indeed, they appeared to be fighting a "culture war" in its defense.
But that whole issue seems to have dropped off the conservative agenda. Not sure why — just the declining significance of books in general?
DougJ
Yeah, I kind of wonder what happened to great books conservatism, too. I think it was mostly neocons and Bill Bennett that were into it, though, and now they’ve been replaced by Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.
JK
A few weeks ago, Andrew Breitbart was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher.
If you want to see a raving lunatic in action, check out Breitbart’s appearance. Breitbart sees subversives behind every corner and comes across as a classic knuckle dragging neanderthal.
The problem with conservativism is that it has been hijacked by asylum inmates like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbuagh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, and Andrew Breitbart.
Brandon T
I’ve also always found it amusing that the people who advocate the "English as a national language" and the "preservation of western culture" issues are generally the first ones to dismiss classic literature and performing arts like opera/ballet/etc as "elitist". I wonder, what constitutes "western culture" to these folks? Wal-mart and made for TV movies?
El Cid
I think today’s conservatives are well-suited to support their entire movement on recollections of this one or other time when some 1960s radicals did something outrageous.
gex
I’m shocked, SHOCKED, I tell ya that there is no market for a civil approach to conservatives’ cultural warring.
El Cid
@Brandon T: It is very important to praise Western culture when doing so allows you to insult the negroes and the Latin folk and the Ay-rabs for the inferiority of their culture; should, however, anyone in the United States attempt to practice and uphold classical Western values (such as but not limited to rational discourse), then a great noise must be made about how the damn liberals are using Satanic gay ideas to undermine Real America.
It all fits together perfectly for the right.
Marshall
Dougl,
I think that the end of great book conservatism, and I’m talking as someone who went to St. John’s College in Annapolis, is the class issue. It used to be that conservatism could be seen as a kind of aspirational narrative where as long as the government stayed out of your life economically you could have the big house and the picket fence and 2.5 children. You might even be able to become rich. Its the Company Man idea. What’s good for business is good for the country is good for me. You could think that maybe if you didn’t like T.S. Eliot there was a standard that everyone knew what was good and you could hope that your kids might like him and read him.
Now that narrative has broken down because it was shoved into too many different narratives. The loss of 50’s era white picket fences against naked plutocratic greed desiring 1880’s New York against a desire not for picket fences but for magnolia’s and Spanish Moss and fields of slaves picking cotton. Or at least when when you didn’t have to pretend that black people where your equal.
You can’t shove that many narratives into a party before it scares off some folks. That’s part of why the north is leaving the GOP because there is no conservative narrative for the 50’s anymore. They’ve lost the plutocrats because the last decade wasn’t really that great for many of them and for the ones it was, well, were seeing where that went.
Whats left is the diminishing scent of spanish moss and honey sukle and the ever present fear stench of the slave uprising.
Brandon T
@El Cid:
I wonder if this time period is going to give birth to conservatives that are compulsively moderate out of fear of being associated with the discredited "loony right"; you know, the equivalent of the Democratic anti-DFHers.
LD50
Naw, the Buckleyites died off and the Palin wing of the GOP took over. They don’t read much, unless it’s the Purpose-Driven Life or the Left Behind books.
alphie
greatest white soul singers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOqC27l9tEQ
Incertus
To be fair, that list of conservative rock songs was one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. The fact that they were 1) apparently serious and 2) unable to understand the lyrics of said songs made it all the better.
Jess
The driving force behind cultural production and consumption is an interest in the world, an appreciation for the new and different, and the willingness to project oneself imaginatively into another’s experience. In this day and age, "conservative culture" is a bit of an oxymoron, no? I mean, how many sequels to Rambo can you inflict on the public before people lose interest?
Jess
@alphie:
A white soul singer, yes, but with left-wing politics and a black back-up band. Not to mention punk-rock roots.
LD50
I was amused that NRO was so desperate to find 50 ‘conservative’ songs, they included Creedence’s ‘Who’ll Stop the Rain’:
Yup, real ‘conservative’ there.
Kind of reminds me of the 80s when the wingnuts tried to glom onto Springsteen as some kind of wingnut icon.
DougJ
It might have been slightly tongue-in-cheek.
demimondian
Generating "art", whatever that is, requires that you have something to say, some way in which you can legitimately feel that you’ll ill done to by the world, some conflict with which others can empathize.
The leading blights or the fRight wing don’t have that. If you’re Jonah Goldberg, what do you have? A mother who propped you up while she exploited the trust of a girl betrayed by the President, and nothing more. Unsurprisingly, Jonah has nothing to say that anyone else wants to hear. If you’re Christopher Buckley? Newt Gingrich? William Kristol? Nothing but network — and that a network by birth, not adoption.
Of course they don’t understand the culture. They want to kill it, or, at best, store it in formaldehyde. Their interpretation of Hayekian creative destruction is the destruction of the creative, not the creation implicit in the destruction of the dinosaurs. They embody those dinosaurs, after all.
dslak
Part of Bennett’s defense of Western literature was based on the premise that it was better than, and more integral to American society, than non-Western literature. I think this dovetails rather nicely with anti-intellectualism. Exhibit A.
Das Internetkommissariat
Breitbart was involved in both the DrudgeReport *and* Huffington Post? I didn’t know that but now I understand the permanent panic/outrage/drama-headlines on Huffpo.
kth
where before you start you’re already beat.
"Femme Fatale" reference FTW.
Hyperion
@gex:
this is why proposing that the very civil Larison replace Kristol was SO stupid. the Base would never read that guy. (And about half the time, I can’t tell what the fuck Larison is talking about. Which gets old after a short time.)
gnomedad
From greatest conservative songs:
Fixed. And revealing. The 55 speed limit might be wise or foolish, but if the government has the right to tell you anything at all, it has the right to tell you how fast you may go on a public road.
alphie
"there is no market for a civil approach to conservatives"
To be fair, start up capital isn’t exactly a market.
Not for political enterprises.
El Cid
@Brandon T: If the right wing is sane enough to figure out where the incentives lie, then eventually they’ll abandon the stylings of Talibangelical Neo-Confederate Reagan-worshipers and go back to being the slightly more pro-business anti-tax contingent of moderates, like Republicans used to be in the Northeast and mid-West before the last 30 years of U.S. politics being dominated by the style of Southern and Western reactionary faux-populists.
DougJ
@kth
I’m always glad when people catch my references.
Wile E. Quixote
The list of conservative rock songs is one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen. I love the fact that they include two songs by Rush, one of my favorite bands, The Trees and Red Barchetta while ignoring Free Will, which basically says that religion is bullshit, Witch Hunt, which is about crowds being whipped into a frenzy because of their fear of immigrants and infidels and which perfectly describes modern conservatism, and Passage to Bangkok which is about traveling around the world and sampling the best local drugs you can find, and we all know that good conservatives don’t do that, they just stock up on American made oxycontin and Viagra and head down to Costa Rica for some good old conservative sex tourism.
The conservative film list is even more pathetic. Citing the Star Wars trilogy as great conservative films because of their "… simple truths about heroism and the triumph of good over evil (not to mention space defense)" just goes to show how completely and totally divorced from reality conservatives are. I remember watching Star Wars and Return of the Jedi and as I recall the huge defense systems that the empire built, the Death Star and its successor, were defeated by a rag tag army of pilots in cheap fighter craft. Hmmm, I’m not sure how that’s a testament to building expensive and unproven defense systems, but then again I’m not a conservative.
Oh, and Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd? Celebrating a state that receives billions more in federal payouts than it pays in taxes.
Onkel Fritze
Just read that list of the greatest conservative songs. ‘Der Kommissar’ was NOT about East Germany. It was about Cocaine.
Wile E. Quixote
Oh, and didn’t Lynyrd Skynyrd also write a little ditty called Mr. Saturday Night Special? I seem to recall a lyric in that song that went like this:
Yep, they’re good ol’ conservative southern white boyz all right.
DougJ
The Base doesn’t read the NYT to begin with.
Which is one of the many reasons that affirmative action for conservatives at the NYT is a bad idea.
AnneLaurie
To quote my favorite R.A. Lafferty line, "Tongue so firmly in cheek as to protrude from the vulgar bodily orifice."
Modern ‘Conservative Culture’ is based on hating all the same stuff at the same time. Which doesn’t leave a whole lot of space for reasoned appreciation of the finer aesthetic qualities. As the Palin/McCain campaign demonstrated, it’s easier to get the Ten-Minute-Hate goobers chanting ‘Kill the nigra’ than it is to get them praising ‘Vote McCain’.
Xenos
@Marshall:
From what I can see from my limited vantage point is that the top 90-98% is really, really pissed off at the top 1%. The middle class has been getting their lunch eaten for decades, but the non-plutocratic lawyers, bankers and businessmen know what has happened, and how it happened, and are taking it personally.
I have my 20th anniversary from a schmanzy New England college coming up. I expect the Goldman Sachs guys are going to get shunned, if they even dare to make an appearance.
Comrade grumpy realist
For a gaggle of people who moan so much about being Conservative, they’re bloody willing to throw away over 1000 years of legal tradition….yah, there’s a damn good reason why we have the definition for treason written into the US Constitution: the Founding Fathers saw extremely well what happened when the head honcho could define treason as he liked. Star Chamber, anyone?
Same thing as talking with libertarians. Who seem to have no knowledge of 1) history 2) economics 3) law, and 4) common sense. Excellent fodder for a 17-year old, but at some point you’ve got to grow up.
LD50
Speaking of Creedence, I note that Miller didn’t list Fortunate Son, about rich kids waving the flag around and getting out of the draft, while working class kids get sent to get shot in Vietnam. I can’t imagine why that was omitted, being as John Fogerty is so ‘conservative’ and all.
The Other Steve
I read that piece, and I was pretty sympathetic to the goals of Culture11.
But the fact that they didn’t take off and yet Breitbart did is evidence that conservatism isn’t about intellectuals.
Incertus
@LD50: I’ve got to think that it would be a lot easier to list fifty liberal country songs than it is to list fifty legitimately conservative rock songs.
jcricket
Hijacked? I think those people are the perfect embodiment of the conservative ethos. Yes, yes, there were the few Burkean, erudite souls like Buckley, but I see nothing other than race/immigrant/gay/atheist-baiting, coupled with war-mongering and persecution complexes for white people already in the majority, as far back as the eye can see.
At best I’d say conservatives "get a pass" because they mostly didn’t enact what their party believed in. Basically, I’m really inclined to think what’s "happening" to conservatism is just nature taking its course.
If I were more generous (and I’m not), I’d say, "dance with the devil and the devil don’t change. The devil changes you". Conservatives are reaping what they sowed. Etc.
Corner Stone
@Xenos
I’m fortunate to work with a lot of people that fall into the 90% + paradigm. I can tell you from my observations that they are in fact not pissed at all at the top 1% but rather very disdainful of the lesser peoples. They still blame the issue on po’ folk, and use the word "soci @lism" to describe the remedy.
And even if the GS type people did show up and were shunned, do you believe they’d be offended? Hmmm, yes QB of the old college team – you’re a HS football coach making $50K a year. I’ll consider your scorn as useful approbation.
They’ll go back home to their McMansions, live their lives and have their steak taste just as delicious.
Mike S
I seem to remember the song list having Neil Young’s "Rockin in the Free World." Someone must have informed them that the song was mocking GHWB because it isn’t there anymore.
Then there is this:
Neil’s "Canadian arrogance" was his denigration of racism.
eric
I think that the loss of cultural conservatism is a function of the lost purpose of education.
A good number of older conservatives where liberal at one time, and/or where trained in the liberal academic tradition.
Now, conservatives are educated as political warriors in Young Republicans.
So, the old guard had read the classics as classics, for the new guard there is no there there. There may be The Prince, but there is no Odyssey or Ulysses; no Eliot; no Waugh; no Twain or Wilde.
At best there are remnants of Sun Tzu spiralling around their calculating vapid heads.
Knowledge is valued in its utility to money and power, not to the development of a "Culture" or a well-rounded mind.
eric
Mike S
Then there is this:
Sorry, sweetie. It was against a government that would build over anything. One that wasn’t concerned with the destruction of a beautiful city.
Brachiator
@Comrade grumpy realist:
Libertarians who refuse to grow up find refuge in the works of Ayn Rand.
Incertus
@Mike S: Plus, there’s the whole Skynyrd was being tongue in cheek with Neil Young part of the story. They apparently did some shows together not long after the song came out.
Mike in NC
They learned their lesson and have gone back to Pat Boone.
LD50
I just think it’s amusing that their ‘Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs" list depends so heavily on taking isolated lyrics totally out of context and ignoring all the artist’s other works and known real-world political beliefs.
LD50
…
jcricket
I see a 1000 points of light, for the homeless man
I see a kindler, gentler, machine-gun hand.
Yeah, that’s a conservative song.
Idiots.
jcricket
My favorite quote about Libertarians is this one:
Heh, indeedy.
jcricket
This is also the conservative approach to governance, journalism, science and geo-political issues.
eemom
well, ok, I finally gave in and looked at that list of songs……and I must say, the characterization of "Sympathy for the Devil" as equating Satan with "moral relativism" is pretty dang clever. Must’ve been the ghost of William Buckley that thunk up that one.
used to be disgusted
Reading George Will on Springsteen, and browsing the list of great conservative rock songs, I realize why "Great Books Conservatism" was doomed.
Today’s "conservatives" have no concept of irony at all. Anything subtler than crude sarcasm goes right over their head — or gets deliberately twisted to send a more straightforward message.
Jane Austen is, in many respects, a great conservative ironist. But I bet George Will doesn’t understand her, and I’m certain that he’d cut a pitiful figure as an Austen character — Mr. Collins with a bow tie.
DougJ
I found the whole list amusing. I couldn’t tell how serious it was, but I thought it was well-done overall.
Alan
Back in the early 90s Bill Bennett was a Rush Limbaugh favorite. Bennett’s promotion of social conservatism with the help of Limbaugh is what gave us Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.
LosGatosCA
Great white soul singers????
Daryl Hall from Philly no less.
But that’s it.
I’ve never heard Bill Clinton sing, but he’s got soul.
cyntax
@used to be disgusted:
Ouch–that’s gonna leave a mark.
eemom
speaking of "values" and George Will, I recently learned he is a member of that esteemed — if hardly exclusive — Society of Conservative Gentlemen Who Dump Their First Wives To Marry Young Blondes.
So, at least he has SOMETHING in common with his erstwhile nemesis, John McCain.
Andrew
Holy shit.
Talk about naive.
I guess one could call George Will all sorts of nasty names, but so long as you did it with a smile in a cheery tone of voice, he’d thank you for the compliment.
amorphous
Considering the incredible stupidity of the "Greatest Conservative Songs" list and the hilarious misinterpretations, I’m surprised they didn’t list "Bombs Over Baghdad." But then again, to do so they’d have to listen to that "ethnic music" by "the blacks."
And did they REALLY put John Mellencamp on their list?! Too much awesome for me.
DougJ
BTW, with all due respect to Darryl Hall, this is the best soul performance by a white person.
gnomedad
See, if Rush had stopped horsing around and just played these songs, John McCain would be president today.
Brandon T
Austen was a conservative ironist? I’m not sure how being critical of the existing social order and motivations in marriage gets you to be a conservative ironist, unless you focus on her disapproval of Lydia/Wickham and ignore the lampooning of Collins/Charlotte/Lady Catherine/Anne de Bourgh. She clearly had conservative views of the role of women in society, but her notion that women had some role in courtship other than acquiescence was quite progressive at the time…
When I think "conservative ironist", I think more someone like Flaubert, who had some pretty incisive cultural criticisms of the bourgeoisie lifestyle….
Marshall
@ Brandon T
I’m not sure that Austen was so much a conservative on a woman’s place in society, I had always thought that she had a very clear idea of where power was in society and how little women had. The fact that all of her books are about marriage, I thought, was a testament to the fact that that was the only sphere available to a normal woman.
Zuzu's Petals
@Andrew:
I wonder how many people realize Springsteen’s original "cool rockin’ daddy" was a wheelchair-bound antiwar vet:
Indylib
@Incertus:
These guys campaigned for Jimmy Carter when he ran for President.
Ned Ludd
“The Icicle Melts” by The Cranberries is not an anti-abortion song. The song was released in 1994 and was about the murder of two year old James Bulger that happened just outside of Liverpool in 1993.
The second stanza doesn’t even make any sense if the song was about abortion:
Conservatives have no shame. They’ll take a song about a tragedy and then try to co-opt it for their own political purposes.
Who are the wing nuts?
Too bad they could never be a serious blog like this one. A blog that makes several posts blaming a TV show host when a nut cases goes on a shooting rampage after he gets into a fight with his mother because his dog urinating in the house.
Svensker
@LosGatosCA:
Joe Cocker?
Van Morrison?
Stevie Ray Vaughan?
Joe Bonamassa? (Joe’s not a great singer, but he sure do got soul.)
Righteous Brothers?
That’s not thinking hard.
Svensker
What does "Freedom Isn’t Free" mean, anyway? Seriously.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Svensker: They must be charging for the dom.
DougJ
I said that Culture11 was a serious blog in the very first paragraph, you jackass! I don’t mind you nuts showing up to criticize me, but try to stick to criticizing things that I actually said.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Svensker:
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
I just made that up.
used to be disgusted
re: Austen . . . well, there are different ways of reading her. I would agree that she was perfectly capable of making fun of powerful people, and that she wasn’t particularly conservative when it came to gender.
But in the context of her time, she was more conservative than contemporary audiences tend to grasp, because we tend to assume that the tone of her works simply embodies the moral assumptions of an older era, when in fact there were a wider range of moral stances available in the 1810s than we tend to realize. If you compared Austen to e.g. Maria Edgeworth, you might start to see Austen’s sense of decorum as a polemical reassertion of gentry norms against a "vulgar" individualism associated with the rising middle classes.
But I’m getting pretty deep into the weeds of lit. crit. here. I should really just say that I totally agree that Austen — were she alive today — would not be voting for GWB or Palin!
eemom
An interesting point that has been touched on in some of the comments, is whether The List itself may have been tongue-in-cheek
— i.e, whoever compiled it really ISN’T that stoopid or that willfully ignorant of the totality of the song or the artist’s known beliefs, but is playing a kind of Obama-esque three dimensional chess here.
Which would mean, that a conservative NRO’er could actually be smart enough, self-aware enough, and self-deprecating enough to engage in that sophisticated a level of humor — which is a whole ‘nuther question.
I vote no.
Napoleon
@Brandon T:
I have been thinking for a while that is exactly what you will see. The public is going to have such a poisoned view of the right that republican office holders will have to be 100 miles from the right wing fringe.
I recall that after Southern Man was released that Young called them and told them what a great song he thought it was and that was where they started a bit of a mutual admiration society.
Incertus
@eemom: Given the lack of success that conservatives have had in anything remotely connected to comedy, I’d vote alongside you.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Also, allegedly, Neil Young’s first concert after the LS plane crash, he performed an acoustic version of "Sweet Home Alabama."
eemom
@Svensker:
Dunno, but freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. And
nothing ain’t worth nothing, but it’s free.
(Anyone who’s never heard Kris K.’s version of that song of his — you totally should.)
gg
It’s funny that they include "Capitalism", by Oingo Boingo, on the list of "conservative" songs. Sure, that song in particular sounds like a critique of ultra-liberal, wealthy, unrealistic college kids, but as a liberal even I find lots of them annoying.
By 1994, however, Oingo Boingo (now "Boingo") were producing songs like "War Again", with lyrics of the form:
Any guess what war this was written about?
Oh, and Danny Elfman was pretty vocal about the recent Presidential election…
Left Coast Tom
Fixed.
Emma Anne
@used to be disgusted:
Hmm. I don’t really think conservatives have ever had a real concept of irony. Not what we are calling conservative – obviously the meaning of the word means different things in different times and places. I find JA rather subversive in an understated way. Not just on gender – she has a lot of interesting observations on class too.
Malron
@ Brandon T
For conservatives "western culture" = old cowboy movies.
Those best lists are typical of the selective amnesia that infects conservatism.
Calouste
Relating the Sex Pistols to conservatism == Epic Fail.
Polish the Guillotines
@LD50:
And therein you have completely encapsulated the entire conservative thought process with regard to reason, evidence, and facts in general.
The Moar You Know
@Wile E. Quixote:
They also oddly enough excluded Territories, the lyrics of which would give any self-respecting conservative a cerebral hemorrhage. To imply that Rush is a band with any conservative leanings is to willfully ignore all of their work since 1977 and to grossly misread most of what they did before then.
Mike G
When I think of ‘conservative’ (in the radical-right Repig sense) rock lyrics, I think of Guns ‘n’ Roses:
Immigrants and faggots
They make no sense to me
They come to our country
And think they’ll do as they please
Like start some mini Iran,
Or spread some fuckin’ disease
"One in a Million"
I have no idea if Axl Rose was paraphrasing someone else’s views, speaking ironically or whatever.
Polish the Guillotines
@The Moar You Know:
Seriously. They’ve obviously never heard Bastille Day. "The guillotine shall claim her bloody prize."
AnneLaurie
Hee hee! The saddest part is, most of today’s conservative "intellectuals" wouldn’t even qualify as Collins — they’re hopelessly shallow social climbers like the Eltons, whose pretentions end up being dismissed as inferior even by an illegitimate teenage nitwit. Mr. Collins was at least a useful idiot, who provided Elizabeth Bennet’s good friend with a lifeline and Lady deBrough with a harmless syncophant, apart from precipitating the ‘quarrel’ that finally brings Elizabeth and Dary together.
The Moar You Know
@Polish the Guillotines: "Power isn’t all that money buys" is my favorite line of that song; given the context, it is a lyrical shot across the bow to looting capitalists of any century – including ours.
Mike G
Republican ‘humor’ seems mostly to involve arrogantly mocking the weak and powerless, like Doughy Pantload making fun of people trapped in the Superdome during Katrina or Flush blaming the poor for destroying the world’s financial system. It’s the ideology of cowards and bullies, beating up on people with little capability to fight back.
It’s a philosophy that seemingly revolves around worshipful unquestionable adoration of some symbols, raging fear and hatred of others; a simpleton literalness and conformity; and deafness to irony or nuance. None of which lends itself to comedy.
Svensker
The Band? The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down? Yeah, Robbie Robertson was always a real Rush Limbaugh lover. Uh huh.
What are these people smoking? Oh right.
The truth is, most people in the arts are by nature liberal, whether they’re political or not. Free thinking artistic types just don’t tend to be conservative — the very thing that makes them artists goes against the "establishment". So these dweebasaurs are cherry picking "conservative" themes from music that is mostly made by liberals.
Except for Pat Boone, of course. And he isn’t on their list. Pathetic.
Kyle
I have not got a clue about Springsteen’s politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: “Born in the U.S.A.!”
Clue. Less.
To paraphrase a quote I heard somewhere, the American flag represents everyone living in this country — it’s not a fucking Republican fraternity pin.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Marshall:
Holy shit, I went there, too. Class of 2000 (I graduated from Santa Fe, though). When were you there?
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
My brother went there. But it was 30 years ago.
He’s the one I talk about often, total right wing religious nut case.
Mike in NC
@ Mike G:
Plus that whole blind reverence for authority schtick, which doesn’t allow much room for self-deprecation or satire. But they say George W. Bush enjoyed telling fart jokes at cabinet meetings.
LD50
It means you might well have to give up your freedom for it.
Up With People had a song with that title. Why aren’t THEY on that list?
jcricket
Jane Austen conservative? Maybe
Stone Cold Steven Austin, most likely.
Colonel Steve Austin (Six Million Dollar Man), I’d guess so.
Austin, TX? Not so much.
jcricket
BTW – How did we go this whole thread and not mention the gem known as "Bush was Right" (the ditty sung to the tune of "We didn’t start the fire" by Billy Joel) by the "Right Brothers" a few years back.
It’s fun to listen to that song and think just how little remorse those fucktards probably think, despite being proven 100% wrong in less than a decade.
Corner Stone
@svensker
I’m pretty sure it costs a buck O nine. Freedom costs $1.09
Polish the Guillotines
@jcricket:
I dunno if he’s all that conservative…. That $6 million was a pretty hefty welfare check, and he did team up with Bigfoot at one point. That clearly makes him an environmental whacko.
J. Michael Neal
"Subdivisions"? "Distant Early Warning"? "The Big Money"? "Middletown Dreams"? "The Pass"? Pretty much everything on Roll the Bones? "The Larger Bowl"?
I’ve read a couple of Neil Peart’s books, and he comes off as kind of a whiny crank who is opposed to anyone putting restrictions on what he wants to do, while feeling strongly about stopping other people from doing things that annoy him, or even just offend his sense of aesthetics. He’s sure as hell not a conservative, though.
Corner Stone
@J. Michael Neal
I’ll see your Peart and raise you Danny Carey.
Walker
@J. Michael Neal:
He’s sure as hell not a conservative, though.
For a while (I am not sure if this is still the case), Peart was a Ayn Rand discipline. 2112 was based on Rand’s Anthem.
MikeJ
That sounds exactly like a modern movement conservative.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
I remember watching Star Wars and Return of the Jedi and as I recall the huge defense systems that the empire built, the Death Star and its successor, were defeated by a rag tag army of pilots in cheap fighter craft. Hmmm, I’m not sure how that’s a testament to building expensive and unproven defense systems, but then again I’m not a conservative.
So it’s a bit like a whole bunch of suicide bombers in speedboats attacking an aircraft carrier?
Johnny Pez
@used to be disgusted:
I should really just say that I totally agree that Austen—were she alive today—would not be voting for GWB or Palin!
What with her being British and all.
bob h
I suppose they also have those list of “greatest conservative movies” and “greatest conservative songs“, but that’s always seemed like an exercise in futility,
You could ask where are the conservative artists, playwrights, musicians, novelists, etc. It is a ridiculous question- one of the defining traits of the conservative is that he lacks creativity and imagination.
Lisa Krempasky
Skimming through the blog and the comments I would expect to find something other than what I found. I mean here is a group of self-proclaimed intelligent, creative people right? The blog condemns the conservative cultural sites for mockery by do what? Mocking the conservative cultural sites.
The comments then go on to offer such indepth criticism as " one of the defining traits of the conservative is that he lacks creativity and imagination." I might refer you to dictionary.com as a starting part of what conservatism is.
My mother used to tell me to be careful when I accuse people. When I’ve got one finger pointing at them there are three pointing back at me. This type of "criticism" is not only EXACTLY what you are critical of conservatives for, but it is not in fact true. Tear the blinders off you eyes. If you have criticism of the policies make them in intelligent conversation. Otherwise don’t make over-arching and wrong generalizations. I would venture to guess that if you actually ever got out of your protected world and met some conservatives you would find many that you like as people.
Lisa Krempasky
Hmmm. I was suprised at the content and comments in this post. I mean you are self-proclaimed intelligent people right? The post is criticism of conservatives for mocking liberal culture. How do you do that? By mocking conservatives. There’s something coming to mind about a pot and a kettle.
The comments then go on to add such brilliant insight as defining a conservate as someone who lacks creativity and imagination. I might suggest that you check with a dictionary as a starting point of what a conservative is.
As a child I often heard that I should be careful when accusing people. When I had one finger pointing at them I have three pointing back at me.
If you have problems with conservative principles fine, let’s discuss them. I would venture to guess that if you got out of your enclave of people who think just like you do and actually met some conservatives you would find people that you actually like.
hwickline
Before there was Rush Limbaugh, there was Rush, a Canadian band whose lyrics are often libertarian.
Wow. That’s some hacktacular writing right there, that is.
canuckistani
I have more than a few conservative and libertarian friends, but none of them are stupid enough to try and tell me that "The Battle of Evermore" was Led Zeppelin’s statement of conservative principles. But if they did, I’d mock them like I mock you.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
If you ventured to actually understand this blog before you posted, you’d know the primary poster is a former Conservative. And that a number of commentators here are such, as well, from my understanding.
For myself, I was a page for Strom Thurmond, briefly, in the late 80’s (the Iran-Contra report came out while I was there; truly riveting reading…) To repent the old cliche, I have Conservative friends, both old and new. I respect many Conservative ideas, and have seen, first hand, how Reagan-era GOP people conducted themselves, and have seen the evolution of the GOP to this day. Suffice to say, I’m less impressed with every passing year.
Sometimes, all too often these days, the "torchbearers" of the Conservative movement score own goals. And it’s as worthy to mock ’em doing that, as they are to mock Liberals/Progressives when we do so. Hell, I mocked in my personal blog some Brother in a City Council meeting claiming the term "black hole" was racist!
I’m certain that, if you seek more intellectual discussion about these points, there are a number of places on the ‘net suited to such discussion. A cursory survey of Balloon Juice would, however, indicate this ain’t one of ’em.
Dave
@DougJ:
Since no one else has mentioned it, I’ll give you props for the Hemingway title reference.
BrYan
Oh crud, late to the party.
What? There’s no rock songs about tapping your foot in the men’s room to get(give?) a BJ.
Fred Fnord
I disagree. Plenty of good music is happy and without conflict. Claude Bolling’s Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano does not strike me as having derived from suffering in any meaningful way. The Irish instrumental musicians I know, who play traditional Irish music, do not seem to be rankable as to quality by how much pain and suffering they have endured in their lives. I personally don’t like my job, but I don’t think that makes me sing Gilbert & Sullivan tunes any better than I would if I did.
I am not a painter, so I can’t answer for them as much, although I’m not sure what kind of a gripe you need with society in order to paint ‘still life with eleven different kinds of fruit’.
Nobody’s life is perfectly good, so I suppose you could posit that nobody whose life was perfectly good could produce art. But I’m not sure what the point of that would be, since it’s just a null hypothesis anyway.
-fred
Graeme
I think it speaks volumes about the lack of anything resembling a conservative cutting edge that so many are willing to cut Culture11 so much slack. I went there as soon as the thing went up, and I even gave them feedback a few times and left some comments. I had high hopes which were immediately dashed. Even today Sully linked approvingly to something by Poulos which basically makes no sense at all. Indeed, I think there’s one comment that’s favorable.
I am definitely not comfortable voting Democrat, no matter what buffoons like Lisa K. have to say. I’m an erstwhile GOP voter who voted green for some time in an attempt to avoid voting for the Democrats.
But… It’s becoming more and more obvious there’s nowhere else for me to go. The flaming wreck of the GOP looks worse by the minute, and the Libertarians don’t even really want political power. Neither of those parties is willing to engage the world as it is. So I’m stuck with the Democrats.
And, like Andrew Sullivan, I still consider myself conservative. I don’t really know why, but I do.
As for Fred’s point about Claude Bolling… That’s exactly it: rock is, by nature, subversive. Yes, it’s been co-opted, re-packaged, sold out, etc. At root, it came from the ‘race records’ and from Elvis’ pelvis, and from all the wild men like Little Richard, Jerry Lee, and Hasil Adkins (can’t resist throwing him in).
It’s not conservative. It’s not Apollonian, but Dionysian. It is all about, as the Supersuckers say, "Grab a drink and chug-a-lug, have some sex and take some drugs." That’s basically what it all comes down to. It’s all about the id, which is why it’s so much fun.
And that includes those G’n’R lyrics cited earlier: id. That’s also why just about the only real ‘white power’ movement essentially revolves around a music scene these days. Otherwise, they got nothin’! I’m sure there are some ‘conservative’ lyrics that NRO would love on the RESISTANCE record label.