The Lotus Eater

It’s been awhile. Sorry. Much business in the land of the Lotus Eaters.

Anyhow, I went on a length about the National Review’s choice of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the Who as the #1 Conservative Rock song of all time. Pete Townsend’s response to this dubious honor is a fascinating read.

Vindication is a beautiful thing.

Now, we all know that the Lotus Eater’s memory is historically unreliable. However, he seems to recall a drunken moment, entirely given over to the self-pitying malaise that characterizes the immediate aftermath of collegiate graduation, when he told his girlfriend of the time that the distinctive power chords in The Who’s anthem “Won’t Get Fooled Again” were “the only meaning he had left in his life” (lucky girl!). By this point, we are also all pretty clear on Mr. LE’s political leanings. Imagine his surprise, then, when he discovered that “Won’t Get Fooled Again” topped the National Review’s new list of the Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs.

Jigga say wha?

Evidently, the lyrics “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” are reflective of the fact that “the conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries” and “this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off naive idealism once and for all”. Right. I totally didn’t catch on to the neoconservative, Horowitzian overtones the first 700 times I listened to the song. Perhaps that is because it a sympathetic lamentation for the failure of revolutions rather than a critique of the naivete inherent to revolutionary idealism. And National Review guys, there is a good chance that you may just be the bosses, old and new of whom Mr. Daltrey sings.

The list is remarkable for many of its similarly stellar interpretations of famous rock songs. To name a few:

#6 “Gloria” by U2. Latin is sooo conservative and Bono once hung out at the White House. Maybe Congress should honor W with a new name. That was something of a Roman tradition. Can you say, “Salve, Imperator Libertas Bush”?

#7 “Revolution” by the Beatles. Turns out that anyone who advocates absolute pacifism instead of violent revolution is a conservative. Also, there is the matter of the shout-out to Henry “Give Peace a Chance” Kissinger after the third refrain.

#15 “I Fought The Law” by The Crickets. Not ironic. At all.

#18 “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour. The lines “”I exploit you, still you love me / I tell you one and one makes three / I’m the cult of personality” only refer to liberals and fascists. The right has no sacred heroes who mislead the public.

#21 “Heroes” by David Bowie and #24 “Der Kommissar” by After the Fire. Liberals love them some Berlin Wall and miss it dearly. We prefer our East Germans under the yoke of oppression.

#40 “Wake Up Little Susie” by The Everly Brothers. The gents at NR say, “a smash hit in 1957, back when high-school social pressures were rather different from what they have become”. Heh, even back in ‘57, Billy Clinton would have nailed Little Susie something fierce (without protection, natch) and forced her to get a Tiujana abortion on the cheap, laughing gleefully all the while. Actually, The Lotus Eater wants Little Susie’s number and MySpace info. We’ve both been sound asleep, my ass.

#43 “Wonderful” by Everclear. You’re not a true leftie until you’ve signed the papers on your first frivolous divorce. There are clearly not enough single-parent families left to make the rounds anymore on that Sesame Street “What is a Family?” sketch.

#50 “Stand By Your Man” by Tammy Wynette. “Hillary trashed it — isn’t that enough?” OH, OH, OH–touché, monsieurs.

Whoops, I seem to have forgotten one:

#4 “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynryd Skynrd. Hmm. actually…you guys can have this one. Homages to apartheid societies and governors in bed with the Klan really are sort of conservative.

Until it is time to explore the Objectivist influences in hip hop, the Lotus Eater bids the staff at the National Review adieu and reminds them that all he ever heard were redemption songs. Those songs of freedom. Songs of freedom.

John Tierney likes to think that he is one of the cool kids. Not only has he been inducted into the Club of Five Paragraph Philosophers on the NY Times’ Op-Ed page–get this–he has never lost a presidential election . In his latest column (not available for those of you without Times Select, a fact which Johnny-boy probably rues since he didn’t have enough time to build up his visibility in the heyday of free access), Tierney takes on Al Gore’s recent cinematic turn in Cannes. Now, the second half of the column actually takes issue with some of the arguments presented in the documentary (however disingenously), but, for some reason, Tierney feels compelled to trot out the old Al-Gore-as-annoying-grade-grubber trope for his first few paragraphs, as if that makes his conclusions stronger:

If Al Gore’s new movie weren’t titled “An Inconvenient Truth,” I wouldn’t have quite so many problems with it. He should have gone with something closer to “Revenge of the Nerd.” That’s the heartwarming angle to global warming. A college student is mesmerized by his professor’s bold measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our hero carries this passion into Congress, where no one listens to him, and then works up a slide show that he inflicts on audiences around the world, to no discernible effect.

But then his slide show becomes a horror movie — and it turns into a cult hit. The nerd becomes the toast of Hollywood, Sundance and Cannes. He is cheered at premieres across America. Audiences sit enraptured through a film starring graphs of CO2 concentrations and close-ups of ice cores.

The documentary doesn’t open in theaters until tomorrow, but it’s already a cinch for an Oscar, and deservedly so. Getting anyone to voluntarily endure 100 minutes of Al Gore and his slides is a historic cinematic achievement.

A stunning insight, really. Al Gore is lame. I bet that, soon, we will find out that Hillary is a frigid bitch and Howard Dean is cray-zee.

Here’s where I am going to take issue with you, John–I don’t think you are Prom King material either. Sure, they let you into Deke back at school, but both you and I know that it was only because the brothers needed a grateful beer-run bitch who could smooth out all those date-rape accusations with the Dean and actually complete the chapter’s required hours of commuity service. Your bi-weekly pontification in The Grey Lady is just as dull as (and far more masturbatory than) any screentime we might share with the Vice President, and does a whole lot less to further the cause of global progress.

John-boy, I think it’s time for you and all the other right-wingers of the commentariat who champion jockstrap notions of public policy to come to terms with your identities. We’re all nerds here. You’re a nerd and I’m a nerd. The only difference is that you are self-hating nerd, and feel the need to persecute fellow intellectuals for their (sometimes socially awkward) intelligence. Pathetic.