The Blue Voice

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Chuckles

Here's some items good for a few laughs (or at least several chuckles):

Some long-awaited news guaranteed to put a smile on almost anyone's face: Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling guilty on almost all counts.

Stephen Colbert is not a right-wing talk show host; he just plays one on TV. Apparently Tom DeLay and his staff missed the joke. Recently, Robert Greenwald appeared on the Colbert Report to promote his latest film, The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress. While "skewering" Greenwald with questions such as "Who hates America more - you or Michael Moore?," Colbert provided ample opportunity for Greenwald to get his message out. DeLay's team, declaring that Greenwald "crashed and burned," sent out a mass email plugging the interview and are now featuring the interview at the top of Tom DeLay's legal fund website.

Meanwhile, over at National Review Online (always good for a few chuckles), they've compiled the Conservative Top 50, their list of the top rock songs with a conservative message. The article is behind a subscription wall, but the New York Times has the list and analysis. Yes, there are some songs here that have a conservative bent and some are performed by artists known for their conservative (or at least libertarian) bent, but most of their choices are laughable. Case in point, the number one song on the list...

1. "Won't Get Fooled Again," by The Who.
The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off naive idealism once and for all. "There's nothing in the streets / Looks any different to me / And the slogans are replaced, by—the—bye. . . . Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss." The instantly recognizable synthesizer intro, Pete Townshend's ringing guitar, Keith Moon's pounding drums, and Roger Daltrey's wailing vocals make this one of the most explosive rock anthems ever recorded — the best number by a big band, and a classic for conservatives.

While Pete Townshend is said to have written this song because of his disillusionment with the British Labour Party, it's hardly a conservative anthem. It's got a political message, but it's more "a pox on both their houses" than it is a pro-conservative message. I think The Who (and many of the other artists on the list, including U2, the Stones, the Sex Pistols, Metallica, Dylan, the Clash, Creedence, and the Offspring) would be very surprised at their inclusion on such a list. The biggest surprise for me was Danny Elfman's band Oingo Boingo, checking in at number 26 on the countdown...

26. "Capitalism," by Oingo Boingo.
"There's nothing wrong with Capitalism / There's nothing wrong with free enterprise. . . . You're just a middle class, socialist brat / From a suburban family and you never really had to work."

I think there might be some irony here that NRO missed. The song "Insanity" might come closer to expressing Elfman's political philosophy...

Christian nation, make us alright.
Put us through the filter and make us pure and white.
My mind has wandered from the flock you see
And the flock has wandered away from me.
Let's talk of family values while we sit and watch the slaughter.
Hypothetical abortions on imaginary daughters.
The white folks think they're on the top. Ask any proud white male.
A million years of evolution, we get Danny Quayle

But again, there's some irony there that they might miss.

Asked to comment on the list, Dave Marsh, the longtime rock critic and avowed lefty, saw it as a desperate effort by the right to co-opt popular culture. "What happened was, my side won the culture war, in the sense that rock and related music is the dominant musical form, not only in the U.S. but around the world," he said. "Once you lose that battle, you lose the war, and then a different kind of battle begins: the battle over meaning."

posted at 11:20:00 AM by fdtate

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