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Thursday, April 14, 2005

Songs from the wPod 

Joe Levy of the "Rolling Stone" magazine, commenting on the 250-odd contents of the Presidential iPod:
"One thing that's interesting is that the President likes artists who don't like him. What we're talking about is a lot of great artists from the 60s and 70s. This is basically boomer rock 'n' roll and more recent music out of Nashville made for boomers."
Aside from a pretty broad generalization (OK, maybe all boomer artists are unreconstructed leftists, but country music, boomer-oriented or not, tends to be a lot more patriotic), I'm amused by the assumption that it's natural to only listen to music by people who share your politics. Hey, if that's the case, I wouldn't be able to listen to U2, Simple Minds, Big Country, Live, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Morrissey, Manic Street Preachers and many, many others.

Levy's statement is quite revealing - he's surprised that a right-winger listens to "left-wing" music because, I bet, left-wingers don't listen to "right-wing" music. Are Levy, or John Kerry, or Michael Moore, or Paul Krugman into country or Christian rock? I doubt it. Partly, of course, it's a matter of choices available - there is a lot more "left-wing" music out there than "right-wing", but I suspect there's more to it than that.

So much for the myth of an intolerant, close-minded conservative.

What do you think? Am I wrong, and Kerry's iPod is bursting with Toby Keith, Ted Nugent, and Newsboys? How "tolerant" are you in cultural stakes?

# posted by Arthur : 8:00 am
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