Kanye West Still Doesn’t Care About French People

So…I am still thinking about that David Brooks column. Now, I know it is a colossal waste of time thinking about David Brooks, but the heart wants what it wants. My heart apparently wants to think about David Brooks. Stupid heart.

In my last posting on the subject, I critiqued the liberal response to the conservative nonsense: liberals want to defend rap by declaring that it is great art, and it therefore immune to criticism on political grounds. This is the same argument that lets us read T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, despite their anti-Semitism and fascist leanings, with a clear conscience. It's ART.

Now, some rap is great art. But not in any higher proportion than any other form. And it is still worthy of defense.

So why can't liberals defend it unless it is genuine, certifiable, capital-letterable Art?

They have to suck politics out of the defense, because the politics make them deeply uncomfortable. Liberals, like conservatives, are deeply uncomfortable seeing angry black people. Vocal angry black people. It’s a reminder that there is something to be pissed off about.

Now, liberals will allow that blacks can, even should, be angry about specific injustices (especially if they use the experience to make ART), but the problems start when the anger is diffuse, when it moves from "I am angry about the poll tax," to "I am pissed off at the world." But that is what popular youth music has been about for a couple of generations, now. Black and white.

And black (or brown) people are not to be trusted in proximity to anger, because they can't be trusted to differentiate between affect and action. And music is all about affect.

I have been conducting an experiment. I am listening to the angriest music I could find, just to see if it made me feel all riot-y. I listened to:

Cheater Slicks
Billy Bragg
Corrosion of Conformity
Phil Ochs
Agent Orange
Pete Seeger
Public Enemy
D.I. (Seth should shitcan his Deathcab obsession and listen to these guys--connect with his roots)
The Beach Boys (no one can convince me that "Surfer Girl" isn't just overflowing with rage)

And guess what? I STILL don't feel like rioting. I wonder why?

Part of it, I guess, is that I had a big lunch and I read somewhere once that you should always wait an hour after eating before lighting cars on fire.

It may also be that I have a job, a home, and hope for my future.

That's not to say that music doesn't have an profound influence on people's attitudes and behaviors. Some Dean Martin got mixed in with the above, and I did feel like getting drunk. And then I got drunk.

And Heaven knows I'm miserable now.