A Right-wing 'Kum Bah Yah?'
Or just another attempt by Conservatives to exploit something they don't understand? (I'll go with door #2, Bob.)
I see people on the Left disagreeing all of the time. Hell, people disagree with me, personally, all of the time. And as long as we do it from a base of kindness and respect for other people’s humanity, we usually get over it quite quickly and find common ground on another thing. There is a big difference between that and “Oh please, won’t anyone hear my primal cry of pain over hypothetical fat people eating hypothetical fudge rounds?”
People love this line, but it’s bullshit and it always has been.
The reason it feels this way to certain people is because they not getting the “Wow, you’re so smart, I never thought of it that way” reactions to which they thought they were entitled. Free speech, for them, isn’t when they get to merely express themselves, it is when they win. Or at least when no one criticizes them.
I may be the only person in America who hasn’t listened to Rich Men North of Richmond. Frankly, I’ve no plans to. I’ve heard a couple of parodies, and while they were entertaining enough, I prefer my music as entertainment and relaxation.
(That is, unless you’re Randy Rainbow and can make me laugh uproariously because you’re funny and WAY too f*****g talented.)
Music has a long history of lending itself to protest. As a child of the ‘60s, I remember that all too well. These days, though, there are two things I’ve learned about the Far-Right:
They aren’t funny…as in SERIOUSLY lacking a collective sense of humor and/or the ability to make anyone laugh.
They do a crap job of producing protest music. If you think I’m kidding, find me three universally recognized top-notch Conservative protest songs. I’d offer to hold my breath on that count, but I think I’d turn blue and pass out first. Right-wing protest songs are usually little more than a poorly strung-together laundry list of grievances about minorities and Liberals. **Sigh**
The difference between Left-wing and Right-wing protest music (and, yes, I realize I’m generalizing) is that Left-wing protest songs are about trying to lift people as a whole. Right-wing protest songs are, more often than not, individual grievance recitals. They’re about laying blame at the feet of a group- Liberals, minorities, corporations, etc.- determined to keep them down.
As if anyone considers them all that important.
So when Rich Men North of Richmond came out, I saw no real reason to hop on that bandwagon. If I hear it, fine; if not, that’s OK, too. I see no reason to jump on YouTube and chase down a video only to realize it’s four minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
(As these things too often unspool, it turns out that truth is often stranger than fiction. The increasingly authoritarian Far-Right may have co-opted Oliver Anthony’s song, but he’s not one of them. It’s just a song; go figure.)
Conservatives seem to be on the prowl for any example of popular culture they can use to underline their argument, which is “everything sucks, and it’s all Joe Biden’s fault.” That there’s verifiable data to refute this argument seems not to impact people like Michael Powell, whose intellectual raison d’etre appears to be whining about the perceived “excesses of the Left.”
Powell whines about affirmative action, about how trans people are ruining everything for varied and sundry groups of people, about how the Left is murdering free speech and what have you. You know, the usual railing against the supposed '“excesses of the Left” that we have come to know and groan at from the Times.
But now he’s writing in The Atlantic, another storied publication that has also been very hot for this sort of content lately. His latest article imagines “Where Donald Trump Meets Bernie Sanders,” a hypothetical middle ground wherein Democrats keep pushing for economic justice for the poor but without ever making white men feel badly about their individual prejudices.
I know, right; Liberals SUCK. We make everything worse. If only we’d recognize Conservatives’ clear moral and intellectual superiority and back off. If we allowed them their rightful place as Rulers of the Universe, America would become a veritable Paradise, Ronald Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill.
Or something like that.
Except that eight years of Reagan, 12 years of Bush I and II, and four years of The Former Guy have proven that Republicans. Can’t. Govern. They’ve had 24 years since 1980, and all they’ve done is fumble the economy and reduce America’s standing worldwide.
(Laura Ingraham: “The anthem for the voiceless….” Seriously??)
Worse, they’ve pursued meaningless culture war issues based on gratuitous cruelty because they have no positive ideas or initiatives to offer America. Sure, they can scream, “LIBERALS SUCK!!” that may become true for a low-information and suggestible portion of the electorate, but what does that do? How does that improve things for Americans?
The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t. And the problem with Rich Men North of Richmond, like many Right-wing anthems, is that it’s about assessing blame, not a search for solutions or a cry for unity. Conservatives love it because it speaks their language, not because it says anything positive.
Looking to assign blame only removes the need to try to solve the problem. It does nothing to make anything better.
It is, in fact, entirely possible to empathize with Oliver Anthony’s economic situation while also thinking he is perhaps a bit of a jackass going around trying to blame fat people and other poor people for it. It does not have to be “Oh wow, we didn’t realize you were hurting so much! We feel your pain and therefore give you a pass on all of the incredibly shitty things you just said!”
If you want the truth, where I feel a little annoyed is with the idea that (mostly) conservative white men are currently dealing with a special kind of anguish. That they are in serious pain and the rest of us are just ignoring it and concentrating on issues that either don’t affect them or that possibly take something away from them that they are accustomed to having. They’re not supposed to bear the kind of “Hey, I agree with you here but not here” scrutiny that barely registers to most other people.
That’s where I feel annoyed and it’s where a lot of other people feel annoyed as well. You want health care? You want a living wage? Great, let’s talk! You want to trash talk fat people and blame them for your pain? No. Sorry, no. We’re gonna say “Dude, you’re blaming the wrong people.”
Powell repeatedly drives home his theory that the ideal stance of the Democratic Party would be economically liberal and socially conservative — which is not terribly surprising given his history of hysteria surrounding the existence and humanity of trans people.
The mainstream media has long had a distressing tendency to treat the Far-Right as if they have a legitimate viewpoint worthy of consideration. The problem with this sort of “bothsidesism” is that it’s succeeded in moving the political center further to the Right. What was once the political center is now reliably Right-wing philosophical ground.
The effect of this is that the Far-Right can credibly accuse President Joe Biden, no one’s Liberal, of being a raging Lefty with socialist tendencies.
I’ll give y’all a moment to clean up the coffee you just spewed across your screens….
So, no, I’m not planning to listen to Rich Men North of Richmond. I’ve better things to do with the four minutes or so it takes the song to spin out. I’ve seen the lyrics, and that’s enough for me. I don’t need to listen to a grievance fest put to music.
If I do happen to hear it, that’s OK, too. I’m not boycotting it. I’m just not seeking it out.
So, what’s the truth about Rich Men North of Richmond? I suspect that depends on who you speak with or listen to. It seems as if those with an agenda, whatever it may be, are looking to latch onto the song and ride the wave. To people like that, it doesn’t matter what Rich Men North of Richmond is about or what the message may be. It’s an opportunity for publicity. It has nothing to do with improving things or addressing the issues America faces.
In an era when Presidential candidates are commoditized and sold like tampons and toilet paper (Tastes great! Less filling!), everyone’s looking for a hook, a sound bite, something they can hang their star on.
Anthony’s reaction to that type of reaction to Rich Men North of Richmond was pretty straightforward: “It was funny seeing my song in the Presidential debate. I wrote that song about those people.”
So, who is Oliver Anthony? He’s a singer/songwriter who writes and plays songs that may or may not match his political views. Songs can tell a story; sometimes, the story’s narrator is fictional. Unfortunately, politicians and pundits on the Far-Right often lack the intellectual depth to recognize that, and they take words at face value.
Then, they feel betrayed when they learn that the performance was never about them or validating their political views. It’s art. They imbue their new hero with all sorts of righteous qualities because the artist “confirms” or validates their beliefs…when, in fact, he’s done nothing of the sort.
So now Right-wingers are angry with Anthony because he “betrayed” them. No, they betrayed themselves by assigning qualities to the artist that were never true to being with. Then, when they turn out not to be true (surprise!!), rather than people taking personal responsibility for their mistakes, the artist gets the blame shoveled onto them.
That’s as unfair as it is misguided and immature. How about y’all grow up and pull your anterior from your posterior? So much for the Party of Personal Responsibility, eh?
They fail to understand that art doesn’t and never will inhabit their inflexible black-and-white world. Art often exists on a spectrum that may or may not wholly and directly reflect the artist. It can be a mistake to twist that art to fit your agenda when you have no idea of the story behind it. Or what the artist stands for.
Or, worse, you don’t care enough to find out.
(In the future, all of my posts will be public. Any reader financial support will be considered pledges- support that’s greatly appreciated but not required. I’ll leave it to my readers to determine if my work is worthy of their monetary support and at what level. To those who do offer their support, thank you. It means more than you know.)
