Monday Funny: When conservatives go 'cool'
After a gruesome news day like this one, a few laughs are always welcome. Especially when they come at the expense of that most special breed, 'right-wing hipsters.' Second only to 'fundamentalist hipsters' in terms of American demographics that make me laugh even as my flesh crawls. 'Stealth Christians' was a term I came up with a few years ago to describe the latter group. They tend to give themselves away as soon as they speak, but it can still be a little jarring. Moreso if I were to encounter one at a concert or a favorite watering hole. That hasn't happened yet. Anyway, this piece from The American Prospect is on the side-splitting (yet creepy) National Review piece on the 50 best.... conservative rock songs. Yep.
By now, anyone with both a pulse and a healthy sense of the absurd has seen the National Review’s list of the 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs. It is entirely possible that someone has seen it and not laughed themselves down the hall, out the door, and into the street. (I didn't stop until I got to the Berkshires.) The author, a hepcat named John J. Miller, who apparently once spun stacks of groovy wax at the Heritage Foundation, a well-known Washington juke where he grew up watching such giants as Sunnyland Feulner and Blind Lemon Rector. He emerged from these humble beginnings to the position he occupies now -- the Alan Lomax Of The Beltway Buffet. (. . .)
Compared to Miller, Greil Marcus is Casey Kasem. I’m not kidding. This guy dug deep. He went SPELUNKING through these songs. In what may be a move to send Bono into seclusion for the next decade, U2’s “Gloria” makes the list because it’s about faith and has a verse in Latin. (What? No love for the “Rex, tremendae majestatis!” chorus from Association’s classic, “Requiem For The Masses”?) Two songs -- “Der Kommissar” and “You Can't Always Get What You Want” -- that are wholly or partly about the difficulty of scoring really good dope make the list -- the former as a commentary about life in communist East Germany (where only the national swimming team got really good dope) and the latter, spectacularly, as a lesson that “there’s no such thing as a perfect society.” Now, I guarantee you that not even Keith Richards ever has been stoned enough to interpret that song that way.
By now, anyone with both a pulse and a healthy sense of the absurd has seen the National Review’s list of the 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs. It is entirely possible that someone has seen it and not laughed themselves down the hall, out the door, and into the street. (I didn't stop until I got to the Berkshires.) The author, a hepcat named John J. Miller, who apparently once spun stacks of groovy wax at the Heritage Foundation, a well-known Washington juke where he grew up watching such giants as Sunnyland Feulner and Blind Lemon Rector. He emerged from these humble beginnings to the position he occupies now -- the Alan Lomax Of The Beltway Buffet. (. . .)
Compared to Miller, Greil Marcus is Casey Kasem. I’m not kidding. This guy dug deep. He went SPELUNKING through these songs. In what may be a move to send Bono into seclusion for the next decade, U2’s “Gloria” makes the list because it’s about faith and has a verse in Latin. (What? No love for the “Rex, tremendae majestatis!” chorus from Association’s classic, “Requiem For The Masses”?) Two songs -- “Der Kommissar” and “You Can't Always Get What You Want” -- that are wholly or partly about the difficulty of scoring really good dope make the list -- the former as a commentary about life in communist East Germany (where only the national swimming team got really good dope) and the latter, spectacularly, as a lesson that “there’s no such thing as a perfect society.” Now, I guarantee you that not even Keith Richards ever has been stoned enough to interpret that song that way.
posted by Matt Sandwich | 6:01 PM
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