The Joy of Hate (23 page)

For another sordid example of repressive tolerance, witness an event at Columbia University, where Anthony Maschek, a student and veteran of the Iraq War, got a not-so-warm greeting. He was recently awarded something inconsequential—I believe it’s called a Purple Heart—after being shot eleven times in Iraq. Sure, he’s no 50 Cent, but he spent two years at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and still gets around in a wheelchair. Maschek was speaking at the school, on the topic of getting the ROTC program back on campus.

While trying to explain the need for a strong military, he was shouted at and openly mocked. It was a greeting you’d expect from people who’ve never done anything remotely sacrificial for their country. The media reaction to this was, of course, decidedly sparse. Obama must’ve told a joke about bowling that day or something.

Fact is, we live in a culture where reality TV trumps reality, patriotism seems quaint, and no-talent teenyboppers gain more respect and adulation than our boys at war. And remember, this was Columbia, where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was encouraged to speak (tolerance!), and a guy risking his life to protect your right to speak—is heckled. After all, you can’t tolerate someone you’ve spent you’re whole life stereotyping. If you listened to him, your world would fall apart faster than a European economy. In fact,
just the sight of anything that smacks of defending your country is seen as “shameful.” While you must tolerate all sorts of bizarre beliefs on campus, the idea of allowing our young men and women to simply show up in uniform is abominable.

And this crap is happening even before college. Let’s go to Schuylkill Valley High School (something I often say to myself) in Leesport, Pennsylvania, where, according to the
Reading Eagle
, two students were banned from walking across the stage during their graduation because they had donned military sashes, given to them by evil army recruiters as a way to honor their up-and-coming military service. You think these kids would’ve gotten the same reaction if they were wearing antiwar buttons?

So what’s wrong with the folks who banned the sashes? Nothing—they just suck. Brainwashed by the last thirty years of PC dogma, they’re suffering from the backward paralysis of tolerance: I’m sure if the two students had decided to arrive cross-dressed as their favorite Golden Girl, it would have been perfectly fine. I would have been fine with both, actually. I am a fan of both the military and the Golden Girls. Both were tough bastards.

But apparently the superintendent of the high school claimed they didn’t want to honor one group and disappoint another. What a big, giant pussy.

Now, I could ask why so many academics suck. The answer would be, they’re jerks, pure and simple. But instead, I imagine these people just don’t know anyone who served in the military, and therefore believe the military cannot be a good thing. Remember, deconstructing
Moby-Dick
as a homoerotic thesis is far more important than eradicating the number-one threat to our way of life. Cocooned in their own world, surrounded by people who agree with them, they cannot imagine anyone finding their opinions
unoriginal—or, better, repulsive. They deserve a one-way ticket to some hellhole where only the military they detest so strongly can extract them (I’m thinking Walmart on Black Friday). They should be forced to squat in a desert gully and explain to armed enemy combatants whose minds are in the seventh century why their understanding of “the whiteness of the whale” means he shouldn’t be executed.

But the lesson learned for all of us is simple and obvious: Tolerance can only be applied to certain groups deemed appropriate by the left. You can tolerate criminals. You can sympathize with brutal thugs on death row. You can even argue that society is guilty for encouraging the crimes of even our worst offenders. But if you choose to serve your country, you lose all rights to be tolerated and do not even deserve a free wet wipe. And that, my friend, is the sound of a civilization turning on itself.

THE BIGGEST LIE IN POP CULTURE?
Rock stars are rebels.
Please
, they’re about as edgy as Hostess Snowballs. Case in point: Whenever there’s an election, and Republicans are looking for music for their campaign events, you see the same stupid story rear its stupid head. A candidate will use a song in an ad, by aging everyman Bruce Springsteen, or Tom Petty (who is beginning to look like your aunt Sally, assuming your aunt Sally is a cabbage), and what follows is a “how dare they!” uproar—not just from the artists themselves but from the media, too. In sum, they are saying, “Hold on a second, you dorky right-winger! You do not have a free pass with pop culture! Sure, you enjoy much of the same stuff we do, but unlike us, you aren’t cool. And when you aren’t cool—well, then, we don’t have to tolerate you. Yep, we will tolerate almost anything, but not you listening to Fleetwood Mac.” (Which actually hasn’t been cool since the Carter administration.)

The entertainment industry hates the uncool (read: the right) so much that if a maniacal leader arose from the left to announce he would send the uncool to “how to be cool” camps, no one in a band would raise an objection. They’re all about peace and love, as long as it’s their peace and love. But if you voted for Bush, you should probably die. Horribly, perhaps by listening to Fleetwood
Mac. I’d say about six minutes of any Stevie Nicks solo album should do it.

Back in 2008, running against Barack Obama, the coolest of the cool, Senator John McCain’s campaign decided to use the song “Running on Empty,” by doe-eyed simpleton Jackson Browne. McCain ended up having to settle out of court with Browne for not asking permission first (thus providing Browne with his first revenue since 1982). Both the Foo Fighters (that band with the guy from that other band where the dude blew his brains out) and John Cougar Mellencamp (three names linked together to spell “crap”) also told McCain to stop using their stuff. And in the 2012 campaign Tom Petty sent a “cease and desist” letter to Michele Bachmann, telling her to stop playing “American Girl.” Now this could all be just a legal maneuver—an attempt to block people from using your music without paying—but funny that Obama didn’t have that problem. He could have chosen any song from the last fifty years and you know the band would have given interviews talking about how “proud and honored” they were. If you remember (and I do), Springsteen was outraged Reagan used “Born in the U.S.A.” in his campaign. (I wonder if Springsteen feels differently now that everyone in what was once called the Soviet Union can buy his songs with a click of a finger.) And as I edit this book, Dee Snider, front man and aged crone from Twisted Sister, just demanded that the Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan stop using their one and only decent song, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” on his campaign stops. To be sure, a gratified America quietly applauded the news.

Does this happen on the other side? Do pop stars get upset when a lefty uses their song to get votes? I haven’t heard of a single case, but Obama used “The Rising” without Springsteen caring, Bill Clinton played Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” until our ears
bled through our noses, and John Edwards played “Our Country” by John Cougar Mellancamp during his ill-fated campaign, without a peep. These musicians were apparently outraged by the right’s desire to use their music, but okay with Edwards? John Edwards, adulturer, liar, and weirdo. I’ve seen holograms more real than this ambulance-chasing lowlife. That this sociopath gets an easier time from the music industry than a war hero like John McCain tells you everything you need to know about dumbass rock stars.

So what do all these bands have in common? They love to see themselves as truly tolerant, but if they ever ran into someone who voted conservative and happened to like their music, they’d probably hit them in the face with their freshly purchased copy of
Dreams from My Father
. So why does musicians’ tolerance only flow one way? Well, perhaps they know that if one of their songs shows up in Republican ads, they will get an army of cold shoulders at a Brentwood cocktail party, or worse, one less blow job from a groupie. And in a way, I don’t blame them. If I were an artist, I wouldn’t want my music associated with any political figure—unless, of course, we exhumed Ronald Reagan and ran him again. But they should operate this method of intolerance for both parties: no one can use my music, period.

That doesn’t happen. And this means something more than just what’s played in stupid commercials or rallies. Fact is, the real war over hearts and minds these days is not in politics but in pop culture. As Andrew Breitbart once said, politics is downstream from pop culture, not the other way way around.

You can tell your kids day and night to be good people—don’t do drugs and or have sex with their ninth-grade teachers—but you’re up against some serious competition: Lady Gaga, hip-hop,
and anything that passes for entertainment on MTV. Bottom line: What is considered cool is everything you find detrimental to sound living. And boring.

The problem here is that lefties don’t grow out of this phase. For most of us, our vision of what is “cool” is established when we’re adolescents. But by the time you’re in your mid-twenties or so, you should start to realize that what was cool at seventeen should be decidely less so. Certainly by thirty you should be out of your parents’ basement. But the hard left somehow manages to see what the rest of us call “growing up” as “selling out.” “Hey, if Mellancamp Cougar John can have his adolescence extended indefinitely, why can’t I?” Because you’re not a millionaire rock star, ya jackass. You’re a mailroom clerk with two kids who probably shouldn’t have so many Coldplay posters up in his bedroom.

And as for the musicians themselves, let’s face facts: what substitutes for hits and genuine cultural relevance for fading rock stars is strident political statements. Outrage at the right’s use of a former rock star’s music is really “Let me make as much noise about this as I can, because I’m one step from an oldies revue on the outskirts of Branson.” Or put more simply, “Hey, remember me? I matter!” It’s selling out, but in a way that’s acceptable to the left.

But the real truth: Being conservative is a rebellion against predictable rebellion. It’s more daring to be traditional than to subvert tradition.

Musicians don’t want righties using their music, but would they demand you take off the shirt that has their name on it? Unless you had great breasts, no, because that money goes right into their designer pockets. Point is, they make a stand, when they’re not being paid. Bruce will still take your money when you buy
that overpriced ticket to Madison Square Garden, whether you voted for Obama or not.

As a host of a late-night show, I’ve seen the convulsions that occur when I have someone “cool” on. After I had a reviewer of alternative music on my show, a legendary alt-rock producer ripped him for coming on. In effect, this was no different from the high school head cheerleader telling you not to hang out with the chess club.

When I had the Florida metal band known as Torche on the same show, similar crap occurred. Torche is an amazing doom metal/pop hybrid, making some of the best music in the world, if you had that kind of childhood. Their lead singer, Steve Brooks, is like a gay version of Jack Black, only more talented and charming. And hairier. I wanted to capture how cool they were as a band, so I created a video about the band. It went crazy on the Web, as all truly subversive things should. But some people in pop circles were disgusted by what they could not understand. This just didn’t fit into their comfy worldview. How could you link a metal band that has a gay singer to a crazy rightie like me? My answer is, You pukes—why not? I’m a right-wing nut and I’m far more tolerant, it turns out, than edgy music bloggers who shoot pool, listen to bootlegs of early Can, and make no money while their girlfriends grow exceedingly exhausted by their promises of self-sufficiency someday. My God, if we knew the Internet would lead to such a raft of self-indulgent pointlessness, we might have asked Al Gore to come up with something else.

There was nothing funnier than watching the liberal convulsion on the music blogs when it was discovered that Moe Tucker, of the legendary band The Velvet Underground, turned out to be a modern-day Tea Partier. If you don’t know her, she was the drummer for the hippest band of all time, managed by Andy Warhol,
with members including Lou Reed, Nico, and John Cale. It was an inspiration to disaffected slackers, no band was cooler, and just about every group you hear these days ripped them off. Me, I am a huge fan of anything that sounds like them, even if I find Lou Reed about as charming as a cat in a blender. Which is an apt description of his collaboration with Metallica.

But in 2010, bloggers found out that Moe had hit a Tea Party rally, where, like everyone else there, she railed against the direction of this country. The problem was, she didn’t fall into the typical definition of the liberal-approved Tea Party stereotype. Moe is way more subversive than the critics of the Tea Party ever could be. So what happens when the coolest cucumber rejects those precious values held by the vintage-T-shirt-wearing, status quo left? Let repressive tolerance commence. Here are a few laments from web-based whiners after discovering Moe ain’t like her (or him), and worse—that she had possibly worked at Walmart:

(One wonders what additives this writer has been adding to her water.)

Of course, once hipsters arbitrarily decide that Walmart is cool to shop at, things will change. Remember how low-class Pabst Blue Ribbon was? Now it’s in every hand of every dweeb trying to grow a beard in Brooklyn.

Here’s another: