You First, Assholes

 

“People are so sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands”

“Stick to what you’re good at. You’re not a political analyst. You’re probably not really well read on the issues that Americans really care about” pic.twitter.com/vnGna7jkzo

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 2, 2024

Maybe Fox News pretend analysts need to shut up--at least long enough to hear what others are saying.

Actually, successful rock bands are political analysts or at least, seize the zeitgeist and appeal to people because they enunciate feelings other people can vibe with.  Are people really sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands--or is it that something they say resonates and that's why they have a following? I mean, songs like "For What It's Worth", or "Ohio" or "Southern Man" or "Leaving on a Jet Plane" or "Eve of Destruction"--the "freedom rock " Woodstock era stuff I heard as my early lullabies, weren't any more neutral than the "Ballad of the Green Berets" was. 

Now, whether I listened to the Dead Kennedys or INXS or The Clash, I heard politics, even as a kid. I don't understand people who ever listened to the lyrics of Rage Against the Machine and never understood what the machine was. Was it a soda machine? Were they just mad they couldn't get their Barq's root beer jones on?  Of course, they were political. 

Look, one of my ear-influences is Billy Bragg. Punk as fuck. Not punk as fuck--slipping in your old age and deciding Trump is punk. Trump is The Man that fighting the power has been about since, whatever. 

And Green Day's "American Idiot" was explicitly a political album. Just like Neil Young's "Living with War."  Bob Dylan--political. Bruce Springsteen--political. Patti Smith, Bikini Kill, Hole, Pussy Riot. 

Fox News talking heads are not political analysts.  They are propagandists. Who knows what ass they pull what they say from? They aren't musical, they aren't artful, they aren't well-informed, and they say whatever the network wants. Conservatism isn't edgy when they go against the mainstream--mostly they are just counterfactual and fronting for some paymaster--the dead opposite of the punk ethos.

Or to put it in rank Gen X terms--they are sell outs. They want you to dismiss what you are hearing because "you can't handle the reality of it". But you totally could get "woke" if you listened to the lyrics around you.  Fox News "analysts" are fake and don't represent anything going on in the real world. If they want someone to stop talking about politics--instead of shutting up artists who care about the world, they could shut the hell up because they just care about payday. 

Maybe the Boomers who listen to Fox should go ahead and re-listen to that "freedom rock" I teethed on as a kid. It was politics. And a lot of it was dead-on.