Richard might get a kick out of this, via Gudio Fawkes :
The band known as “The Right Brothers” sing how President George W. Bush is right on all of the decisions that he has made.
Watching it, it seems like a mix of Billy Joel’s “We didn’t start the fire” with a guitar riff that sounds like the childhood rhyme “Tell tale tatler”. I adore the France line though.
You’re obviously only my reading my “dirty” music recommendations, for I recommended this Sunday!
Well, the music is just okay, but I like the lyrics. Especially the “Ted Kennedy – wrong! / Cindy Sheehan – wrong! / France – WRONG! / Zell Miller – right” line.
Well, the music is just okay, but I like the lyrics. Especially the “Ted Kennedy – wrong! / Cindy Sheehan – wrong! / France – WRONG! / Zell Miller – rightâ€? line
I seem to remember an entire political partisan side in the US (and its adherents here) spending the past five years moaning about how ‘artists’ shouldn’t be political.
(And sucking up to the government is neither very radical, nor very brave)
Mad stuff!
“spending the past five years moaning about how ‘artists’ shouldn’t be political.”
I do too.
The authorative book on the subject is Laura ingraham’s “Shut up and Sing”.
I don’t have a problem with artists making political protest in their music, even if I disagree with it (hell, I even listen to Bright Eyes’ “when the president talks to God” occasionally or the Saw Doctor’s “Michael D rockin in the Dail”), I really hate the “here we have Alec Baldwin/Bruce Springsteen/Kayne West to give us their astute political analysis”.
That just annoys me.
Arse. I skimmed over that post Auds. I think the lack of pictures might have put me off. Alec Baldwin was fantastic in Team America.
I see Glenn Reynolds was pimping the song over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free today, much to the amusement of its readers.
Anyway, is it just me, or does the singer look remarkably like Richard Delevan?
Bottom line, that song is shite and there’s nothing interesting about the lyrics. Well done, conservatism, you conspicuously fail to rock.
I recommend Randy Newman’s Political Science instead.
“conservatism, you conspicuously fail to rock.”
Thankfully then it’s not one of the major goals of the movement.
The point about this song/band is that they feel they are delivering to a niche, that like it or not, is not being served by most mainstream artists.
And why shouldn’t they?
I could say the only thing that liberalism rocks at is music, but that’s been done before.
Liberalism rocks out in all the arts, thereby demonstrating a fundamentally superior grasp of the absurd tragedy of the human condition. Liberal, progressive types also rock out in the worlds of science and technology to a greater extent. Anywhere the height of human achievement has been reached, there will you find a reflective person rather than a reactionary.
Conservatism, alas, is the universe’s frightened mouse.
While we’re at it, liberal political economy is quite obviously more nuanced, humane and intelligent than the “one big thing” conservatives think they know.
Copernicus, I salute you.
The point about this song/band is that they feel they are delivering to a niche, that like it or not, is not being served by most mainstream artists.
And why shouldn’t they?
Because they’re utterly crap, and the only reason anyone knows them is because of the in-your-face political propaganda which makes up the entirety of their output?
Btw, I LOL’d to see Talon News pimped on their video. For those who don’t recognise the name, that’s the GOP operation whose sole ’employee’ was “Jeff Gannon”/JD Guckert, whom Richard may indeed very well know.
I can’t parse this “a niche which, like it or not, is not being served by most mainstream artists”.
This skirts dangerously close to the typical right wing whinge that it’s not fair how “lefties” write all the books/sing all the songs/teach all the young people. It appears to imply that mainstream artists have let this niche down – but good art isn’t made to please an audience, it is created out of the compelling need to respond to the human condition by the artist him or herself. Good art finds its audience after the fact.
That this song appears to react to a need for a supply to meet a demand probably goes a long way towards explaining why it’s so feeble an effort.
Yes, my point about them serving a niche was that people will buy their music regardless of how crap they are. They’re no Mozart or Bruce Springsteen and don’t make themselves out to be.
People will like them for the same reason Michael Moore sells out cinemas and books – it’s a simplistic analysis with a touch of the playground taunt about it.
As for “Anywhere the height of human achievement has been reached, there will you find a reflective person rather than a reactionary”
To suggest that everyone who holds a conservative view of the world is a reactionary and that good liberals like yourself, Copernicus, are always “reflective” is rubbish.
I can easily make the opposite sweeping generalisation and say that historically many of the greatest artists have been inspired by conservative ideals.
The recent proliferation of liberals in mainstream art/music/whatever is a reflection of liberalism becoming the status quo. The automatic soundbite of many of the musicians/Hollywood tends to be regurgitation of whatever popular liberal tract they’ve read – George Clooney’s recent paranoia speech for example.
Perhaps conservatives tend to be more reactionary at the moment simply because they are in possession of the new ideas. The established wisdom of liberalism/relativism has been found wanting and they have something to say about it. There will be an increase in conservatives artists, not because it’s part of great conservative masterplan for taking over the world, but because it will become a philosophical basis that more creative people will work from. This band are not part of that future canon.
Many right-wingers whinge about the lefty artist/musician dominance – so what. I personally don’t think it’s an issue. It annoys that me that Sean Penn is viewed as some great prophet, but it’s not keeping me up at night the same way many lefties view Fox News as the harbringer of all evil, and the piece de resistance in proving that they don’t, in fact, control the media.
These are largely generalisations made in a US context, made by a brain that is slightly deep-fried (and inspired by Damien’s last post, listening to the Guillemots!)
P.S. “political” art, either left/right wing is bound for disaster if it is made for the express purpose of pissing the other side off.
As a conservative, I passionately believe that all art should be created and enjoyed freely by all. Art doesn’t belong to a side. It springs from a social and personal milieu that expresses something.
Plus there’s a difference between what’s art and what’s just fun for the rest of the us to enjoy.
Anyway, as a conservative I should probably be more interested in taking state funds away from artists than worrying about these things.
What are these new ideas? Why would creative people suddenly become conservative simply because of an increase in conservatism among the general populace? Conservative people are conservative because of their personality types and the type of personality which tends to the conservative doesn’t tend to be a creative force – I’m not saying that’s true in every case, it just generally appears to be so.
In what way have liberal values been found wanting? How has there been a recent proliferation of liberals in the arts? Surely, the arts have always been progressive and liberal to a greater extent than they have been reactionary and conservative – hence all the burned books, censorship and persecution.
Why are young Irish people confused between domestic US politics and the politics which are directly relevant to their own lives?
My point is simply that liberalism have become the establishment, certainly within the context of arts/music. In the US. Which is what the discussion was about – US singers; “typical right wing whinge that it’s not fair how “leftiesâ€? write all the books/sing all the songs/teach all the young people” – that’s a US phenomen.
I’m certainly not confused with US domestic policies and politics relevant to my life. I’m interested in US domestic politics, but have the rudimentary intelligence to realise that I’m not living in the US and therefore am not affected personally. I fail to see how this perceived mixup has any bearing on anything.
I am particularly interested in hearing your theories on conservative personality types. As far as I’m aware, no particular personality type has been delineated for conservatives, or liberals. Such a distinction hardly does the human condition much justice if we can be so easily divided politically.
Michelle Malkin describes “bush derangement syndrome”, and despite being broadly accurate in some of her claims, she lacks the eminence and objectivity to have it forever immortalised as a personality type.
Copernicus, why would creative people not become conservative? There’s nothing inherently anti-creative about conservatism.
As for liberal values being found wanting, well, I don’t agree with them personally (and no doubt you will argue the reverse) and I think France is becoming a glaring example of the “liberal, humane model” that you tout. That is, unless, you have another liberal model in mind, that doesn’t have high tax, high unemployment and gross inefficiency, with strikes as commonplace as enterprenaul success stories.
I’m actually fascinated by your thought process in all of this. Conservatives are bookburner censors who persecute the great artists of our time, while reflective liberals, of undetermined non-conservative personality type, make art that is so stupendously brilliant that it will create audiences simply becuase it reflects the human condition, as seen only by the gifted and insightful liberal.
I would like examples of the above please.
As far as I’m concerned, The Right Brothers are fun. They’re quirky by the standards of mainstream music, where liberal dissent and antiwar platforms are commonplace. Noone is suggesting they deserve Hall of Fame status. They’re different and that’s what interesting about them. Many conservatives in the States want an alternative to American Idiot and Kayne “brave courageous stand against George Bush in the conservative heartland of Hollywood” West.
I’m sure if Eminem sung about free market economics and Bright Eyes about the need for bigger Defence Department budgets all day, many liberals would be happy with a Joe and Donna McCaul version of “John Kerry Would Have Been Perfect” or something.
actually low taxes should be a liberal thing. Ie liberalism says that the government should have little say in what you can do with your life. Thus if you apply that philsophy to econmics you get right wing economics. Indeed left wing economics i.e the state has a role in the economy is more conservative. BUt somewhere down the line they got mixed up. So liberalism is intertwined with leftism and conservatism is intertwined with the right.
I don’t accept that economics are left or right wing (which is not to say economic theories aren’t). The old marxist v. laissez faire arguments were over years ago and the attmepts by cranks on either side to resurrect the debate is simply class politics as usual. We all know how the market works, the political question is how we make market forces serve society. People who suggest we allow the market to hold complete sway over our societies really mean that we should allow the people with the most money right now to hold sway. Drivel.
Ireland has a liberal soceity, which certain malcontents are attempting to dismantle rather than to solidify at just the wrong time. England is a liberal society. Denmark, Sweden, Finland etc etc etc etc.
France isn’t in trouble because of liberalism at any rate.
I could start listing creative people whom I perceive to be liberal but that wouldn’t achieve anything unless the list was exhaustive, which it simply couldn’t be. I think it is reasonable to say conservatives tend to be conventional and that artists tend not to be. If that’s not true, it certainly isn’t obvious to me.
I think one problem here is, as usual, the two dimensional nature of the debate. Frank Zappa – an artist legend, for me – is a libertarian. Does that make him a conservative or liberal, in your view, Copernicus? If the former, Is he merely an exception to your apparent rule in which artists are inherently liberal? Does it matter? I’m on my lunchbreak, and if I continue typing, I suspect I’ll be late back to school – so I’ll catch up on this again later.
Well, as I think the aveage “libertarian” is full of shit, I don’t think Frank would recognise libertarianism in its current incarnation. The young soi disant libertarians of the Irish blog o’sphere talk a lot of bollocks about freedom of choice, small govt etc, and yet they’re the first to endorse torture, the limitation of human rights, war, special interest lobbying, the restriction of voting rights, the criminalisation of anti-social behaviour of the type everyone indulges in when young and which, when out of hand, is obviously the result of exactly the diminution of social cohesion corruption by the respectable classes causes. It’s funny how whenever a libertarian position is articulated on these blogs, the people at whom the sentiment is aimed are women, travellers and the poor who have had the audacity to try to have the playing pitch levelled, no matter in how minor a degree.
These people are 19th century reactionaries who’ve hi-jacked the clothes of already bankrupted libertarianism to cloak in respectable terms the age old protectionism of the bourgeoisie. They’re cowardly custards who can’t take life on the chin. And I don’t think Frank were he alive today would identify with them in any way, shape or form.
Copernicus, why would creative people not become conservative? There’s nothing inherently anti-creative about conservatism.
Then why are there no decent ones? It’s puerile to blame the lack on a Liberal Conspiracy of some sorts.
As for liberal values being found wanting, well, I don’t agree with them personally (and no doubt you will argue the reverse) and I think France is becoming a glaring example of the “liberal, humane model� that you tout. That is, unless, you have another liberal model in mind, that doesn’t have high tax, high unemployment and gross inefficiency, with strikes as commonplace as enterprenaul success stories.
And that people prefer to live in, as opposed to work in (if they’re consumed by the notions of “greed is good”). The Chunnel commuters being a case in point.
I’m actually fascinated by your thought process in all of this. Conservatives are bookburner censors who persecute the great artists of our time, while reflective liberals, of undetermined non-conservative personality type, make art that is so stupendously brilliant that it will create audiences simply becuase it reflects the human condition, as seen only by the gifted and insightful liberal.
I would like examples of the above please.
Even in our own (Irish) history, you shouldn’t find anti-establishment voices too hard to find in famous songs.