Far be it from me to assume there’s any rhyme or reason behind who wins Grammys (ha! not doing that).The very next goddamn sentence:
But it’s hard not to look at this situation and wonder if the Grammys put politics before music.This breathtaking display of self-unawareness, along with her ridiculous Lena Dunham columns, makes Woodruff the front-runner to replace Jonah Goldberg as the Corporal Agarn of NR's culture war troops.
Anyway I don't know what she's complaining about; one might as easily argue that Daft Punk's big night is a victory for the Singularity.
UPDATE. Hear hear, M. Krebs in comments: "Actually it's hard not to wonder if there's anything the Grammys don't put before music."
Plus, Formerly_Nom_De_Plume:
I won’t be talking about Ryan Lewis at all here because first, I don’t know anything about him
lost out to someone named Ariana Grande about whom I know nothing
Someone with a better grasp of hip-hop history than I (read: someone with any grasp of it at all, really)
(And if this piece already exists, can someone send it to me?)Her training is complete. Jonah watch his back? More like congratulate himself on a job well done.
The Matlock impression only works when you're pretending to be a dimwit, Betsy.
ReplyDeleteConcerns as weak and ephemeral as politics can't hope penetrate the hermetically sealed bubble of industry narcissism and self congratulation that are embodied by major award shows. There are like TED talks for the music industry, emphasis on the industry.
ReplyDeleteBut it’s hard not to look at this situation and wonder if the Grammys put politics before music.
ReplyDeleteActually it's hard not to wonder if there's anything the Grammys don't put before music.
Woodruff ridicules a PSA that Macklemore made for the ACLU:
ReplyDelete"...being beaten with a club, pepper-sprayed, and tased for expressing my
political views would really slow me down. That’s why I carry the ACLU
card.” If only the Kiev protesters had remembered their ACLU cards!
I guess she doesn't know what the A stands for? What's she saying? That the ACLU is laughable because they can't help you if you get shot dead in the street somewhere between Bulgaria and Moscow? Stupid Macklemore, supporting civil liberties -- fat lot of good that'll do when Obamahitler unleashes the FEMA goons to carry out Kristallnacht 2016? Does she think the protests she keeps hearing about are going on in Kiev, Oklahoma? WHAT IS SHE SAYING?
It appears the Fartowan has become the Sharteye!
ReplyDeleteOne of Robert Ludlum's lesser works.
ReplyDeleteAfter Kristallnachts 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015, Kristallnacht 2016 will just be a mop-up operation.
ReplyDeleteWhen I want to know what rap album to download next, the first place I turn is to the conservative press. But especially to the comments: "Rap, hip hop, etc is a minstrel show." Which is apparently a bad thing when the liberals might be watching.
ReplyDeleteWho?
ReplyDeleteTry Aimee Mann, Johnny Marr, Richard Thompson, Neil Finn, Neko Case, ... And those are just a very few of the ones who are still living.
(Sorry I started this. Shoulda known better.)
"Far be it from me to assume there’s any rhyme or reason behind who wins Grammys..."
ReplyDeleteWow, the Grammys were last night? Thanks, kid (gives Betsy a pat on the head)... you just run along now keep an eye on 'em for me, all right?
"I have a lot to say about Macklemore, though."
ReplyDeleteThus proving that tech savvy Betsy has mad Googling skillz that Jonah can only dream of.
But it’s hard not to look at this situation and wonder if the Grammys put politics before music.
ReplyDeleteI know Roy mentioned the breathtaking absence of self-awareness, but it seems to be a tic with these people. That old Kung Fu Monkey piece linked to last week about the hapless Libertas and old friend Jason Apuzzo had a similar sentiment. That time, the Libertas artists were all pissed off that an explicitly lefty company was making overtly political movies -- even though that was their own expressed goal as well. So now we have a "cultural" critic aiming at the fattest fish in a thimbleful of water (my music-biz friend on the Grammys -- "People ask me, you're in music, are you excited for the Grammys? No, because I like music.") and manages to shoot her own foot. Christ, she writes for a political magazine! About politics! Which, especially in wingnuttia, comes before every single other thing.
And of course the Grammys are political, you dotty bint, but not as much in the way you think as "political" in that the music industry is a pit of vipers and they scheme and plot like families from Game of Thrones, except without the artistry. Macklamore, for reasons that defy my understanding, is one of the biggest acts on the entire fucking planet. But somehow, and that somehow is completely irrespective on his stance on civil liberties, he's made it huge. And he'd be huge without the Grammy too.
What's amazing is that SHE is putting politics ahead of any understanding or insight to both the market and the cloistered, seething industry which "celebrates" whatever the fuck at their award ceremony. I'll tell you what, the day some warbling lefty who sells 2,501 downloads wins Artist of the Year, then at least there's a plausible case to be made. This is not plausible.
(Right? There's no way to win this.) But now I'm just confused -- Neko Case hasn't won a Grammy, as far as I know, despite being amazing. (I mentioned Lady Antebellum because they were one of the bands that Arcade Fire was up against -- of the nominated albums, AF's was no doubt the best.)
ReplyDeleteAh! Okay, never mind. My bad.
ReplyDeleteLive in fear of imaginary civil rights violations, laugh at the ones that actually happen. Civil disobedience for me but not for thee. That's the conservative way.
ReplyDeleteI take it we are in agreement on Neko Case! Let's run with that and forget our differences.
ReplyDeleteNot that I'm exactly dying to read it, but hasn't there been any cultural warring waged on Lorde/"Royals"? I mean yeah, maybe someone decided that the time was right to make a mint off of teen angst again, 20 years after grunge peaked and 10 after emo (It's a great song regardless, by the way) but our friends have never been much for such subtleties. I'd think "Down with conspicuous consumption!" + youth solidarity + foreign-ness + self-confident female singer would be irresistible skree-bait. Or maybe I'm wrong and they think it's a Tea Party/regular Joe anthem. Either way, the resulting stream of bullshit would be fascinating for research purposes.
ReplyDeleteWhy dies the phrase "and interns have interns and so on ad finitum..." Come to mind?
ReplyDeleteWith apologies to Corporal Agarn:
ReplyDeleteThe end of the culture war was near when quite accidentally
A Jonah displeased abruptly seized "retreat" and returned it to "victory"
His legacy hire pleased and thrilled his cash-gobbling family group
While cashing a check his Coke was spilled and so they demand he'd command--
F-Troop!
Where internal fights are colorful sights and nobody takes a lickin'
Where no one can research, 'cause they're chicken
When begging for money gets them down you know their morale can droop
So book them a cruise to lie and clown before they resume with a shart and a boom--
F-Troop!
All I can say is Milli Vanilli.
ReplyDeleteOh, I thought we were talking about the Gramscis. No wonder it wasn't that interesting to me.
ReplyDeleteWell done!
ReplyDeleteF-Troop was a favorite of mine as a kid.
~
There was apparently someone online who thought the song was racist because some of the lyrics could somehow be viewed of dismissive of hip-hop culture (the part about cadillacs ?) I'm getting this second so don't really know the details. Not sure if what the political angle (if any was) though.
ReplyDeletePop culture is weird.
Oh it's such a good song, I don't want it ruined by these jerks. I still have scars from when a Christian friend in high school explained the satanism of Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Ted Nugent can get Gary Sinise to show him how to set up Friends of Alva so that victims of the librul recording industry's political prejudice and blacklisting can bind one another's wounds and pay Michele Bachmann to come speak to them on their stolen legacy of greatness.
ReplyDeleteFor the young whippersnappers:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/zVwFADi4Y38
"There was someone online who thought X was racist" is true for most values of X.
ReplyDeleteI know what you're referring to, though. It was a writer at The Toast or Jezebel or some similar website. Of course, as the many people who pointed and laughed at that line of criticism noted, it's that writer who heard 'gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin' in the bathroom' and immediately thought 'of course! She's talking about black people!'
They know we all have this on our iPods...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-0lAhnoDlU
Children having interns?
ReplyDelete"explained the satanism of Bridge Over Troubled Waters."
ReplyDeleteThat is such a relief! It's only good old, ol' time Satanism. I had heard it was about Scientology.
Well I have to say as a 64 year old child of the 50's and 60's I was utterly baffled by what passed for music last night - I did enjoy seeing Paul and Ringo play together again but really, it's time for both to retire.
ReplyDeleteIndeed eat the rich - they live such pampered lives of leisure I'm sure it would be just like eating veal. The poor are too wiry - need extra long stewing. You can get away with a nice Chianti with the rich but the poor will need a very heavy Bordeaux I'm afraid ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the memory of things I can't forget
ReplyDeleteBut only if you call now within the next 5 minutes - operators are standing by
ReplyDeleteChrist, she writes for a political magazine! About politics!
ReplyDeleteThe complaints about a music award do come across as professional jealousy.
Oh god, I loved F Troop too.
ReplyDeleteNaahh...I have trouble digesting Botox.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I saw this documentary about Larry Storch's wife's daughter, who was half black and who they pretended to have "adopted."http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/nyregion/norma-storch-is-dead-at-81-subject-of-tv-documentary.html
ReplyDeleteIt was very bizarre to collapse my childhood sense of race relations and who adults were into my adult understanding that the people I saw on TV, like Larry Storch, were actually living out our national race trauma in their private lives. It was like watching a family friend take off a mask and reveal an entirely other person underneath, as though my heart had never grasped what my head had known for years (because I was probably in my 40's when I saw the documentary) which is that race and race division was everywhere in the country and always had been.
Having written that I have to say that I have a sneaking pity for the teaparty types who refer back to the fifties in hushed, sentimentalized, tones. Because didn't I, growing up in the sixties, have the same idyillic vision of life in capital A america even as we ended the decade watching the vietnam war on television every night? Somehow wasn't I imprinted with a happy version even of WWII with Hogan's Heroes and McHale's Navy and of the massacre and dislocations of the indians in F troop.
Jonah should have won a Grammy for his song Grift Shop.
ReplyDeleteHer training is complete. Jonah watch his back? More like congratulate himself on a job well done.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he can get her to walk his dog next...
Her training won't be complete without FAAAAAAAARRRT. Goldberg probably thinks once she's got that down, she'll never be able to sneak up behind him without him knowing.
ReplyDeleteLard Knows enough one-note tunes have won in the past.
ReplyDeleteI'd get cable if there were a PPV event live-broadcasting a competition between Nugent & Sinise to see who could vanish up their own asshole fastest (or asphyxiate, trying).
ReplyDeleteJonah Goldberg as Corporal Agarn? That's not Storch in his tighty-off-whities.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually pretty simple if you have one of those hard, colorful melamine chairs that were all the rage in the late '60s/early '70s.
ReplyDeleteThat's a heartbreaking story about the daughter, Aimai. I never heard of the documentary and I don't have any knowledge of the F-Troop cast, more or less, except for the name Larry Storch because it's a funny name. One small bit of funny from the largely discomfiting obit and I'm not sure why it tickles me at all:
ReplyDelete"The truth was that Ms. Cross was the child of an affair Mrs. Storch had had with Jimmy Cross, a black song-and-dance man who was Stump in the well-known performing team Stump and Stumpy."
Maybe it's the idea that "well-known" is a bit of an elastic concept.
Mackelmore is big because the internet has made novelty songs more viable than they've been since the dawn of rock and roll, for pretty obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteThis is ok, IMO. I like novelty songs. "Thrift Store" is a fine novelty song, as was "Gangam Style," "Hot Cheetos and Takis," and "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" (how can you not root for a song about the dance you're supposed to do to the song itself--that's like what pop music is, basically).
Oh, I'm not old manning it about "it shouldn't be popular". My 7 year old loves Thift Shop (the PG-13 version at least), but even as a novelty song, I don't like it. Same Love, beyond its inherent camp, is just awful -- to my ears. I fully respect the fact even though twentysomethings, tweens and children today (our future, natch) have unbearable taste in music, but it's not for me to love or even like. Vive la difference! Or whatever that is. I just don't really get the overall appeal of a Katy Perry or a Mackelmore on the basis of the music -- even though I still like music made by twentysomethings -- take these guys for instance. At the same time, I never liked at the time, nor liked after he died, the Thriller-era Michael Jackson or much of any the keyboard-dominated shit of my tweens, of which I'm sure the old fogies of the day also didn't understand the appeal.
ReplyDeleteAnd to complete the cycle, I'm a twenty-something who doesn't grok most of what's being produced right now. I assume panicking about one's own generation's terrible music choices is one of those things that fades with age.
ReplyDeleteYou could probably accuse me of Rockism, and you'd probably be right. What I dislike more than the particulars of who's on the charts at the moment is the seeming lack of diversity in genres and styles over the last decade or so.
And we'll never be wingnuts (wingnuts).
ReplyDeleteWe ain't howling for blood,
That kind of rage just ain't for us.
We crave a different kind of buzz.
Let me be your Jonah (Jonah),
You can call me big cheese
And baby I'll farrtt, I'll farrtt, I'll farrtt, I'll farrtt.
Let me write those calumnies.
Silly, you don't clean up broken glass with a mop!
ReplyDeleteI see your Milli Vanilli and I'll raise you a Christopher Cross.
ReplyDeletehow can you not root for a song about the dance you're supposed to do to the song itself--that's like what pop music is, basically
ReplyDeleteDo the funky gibbon!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXq8rELhUkw
Assigned a job to do, you pass it on to someone else intern.
ReplyDeleteI rate for the Motorhead version.
ReplyDeletePete O'Mane and his hit single, "Pull My Finger".
ReplyDeleteWho would ever want to sneak up behind Jonah? Dude's the human bonnacon!
ReplyDeleteWho's the sexy guy at the 1:28 mark?
ReplyDeleteIf there's one thing a wingnut would never feel guilty about, it's padding the hours on her timesheet.
ReplyDeleteSo much for standing athwart history, yelling Stop! Now we're discussing posers who are ruining rap music rather than condemning the genre altogether. It's as if Carrie Nation wrote an article critical of a bartender who mixed her a questionable Singapore Sling.
ReplyDeleteFuh-huck, I clicked through (hey, it's 5AM, I'm at work, it's 12 degrees out) and I have to say, she may be dumber than Jonah. She may be dumber than Jonah!!
ReplyDeleteI would certainly betray all my Jedi ideals and defy my Jedi master to spend time with this comment.
ReplyDelete"Hot Cheetos and Takis,"
ReplyDeleteWait, what? Did Jonah have his intern write a song, as well as all his columns?
Try betterpropaganda.com,download a few hundred mp3s and hear a lot of sounds that don't get played.
ReplyDeleteAlso look up SXSW and download the zipped archives which have roughly 800 songs per year. Many different flavours of music to try - many artists you have not heard and will never hear again.
We're the Hakowee!!
ReplyDeleteI dunno.
Don't interns migrate en masse every summer or something? I've seen it on David Attenborough.
ReplyDeleteAt least you'll be keeping a stiff upper lip.
ReplyDeleteThere is, unfortunately, a giant swath of humanity who prides themselves on being ignorant of things they don't like or are suspicious of. "I hate that thing soooo much, that I don't know anything about it and would never learn anything about it, because then I might not hate it, and what kind of hypocrite would I be then?"
ReplyDeleteNearly all of these types tend to identify as conservative.
RIP Pete Seeger. Wingnut ragegasm in 3... 2... 1...
ReplyDeletePadding Hours is usually part of first year MBA courses titled "Income Enhancement," or similar. I gather no candidates really pay any attention because they assume they will never have an hourly job.
ReplyDeleteFuck.
ReplyDeleteI must say about today's yute, though...I was proud of my teen-aged daughter when she got to meet Seeger in Newport a few years ago, and she was more excited about him than any other act there, including the Decemberists. I never expected that, and it tickled me.
That's right, they even have their own Capistrano in Wales: Intern Abbey
ReplyDeletePete seeger is someone who will never die. I dont care what the news says.
ReplyDeleteI assume panicking about one's own generation's terrible music choices is one of those things that fades with age.
ReplyDeleteMore common I think is that panicking about the younger generation's terrible music choices increases with age.
"Novelty songs are supposed to be just that - novelties..."
ReplyDeleteMais où sont les médecins Dément d'antan?
It's not about sabotage?
ReplyDeleteI found this even more amazing:
ReplyDelete"At Columbia University, where he majored in history, he discovered National Review—“Jonah Goldberg: he’s really crucial to me”—and his future employer, the Standard. – Matthew Continetti speaking to AFF Doublethink"
- via TBogg
Just imagine saying the words "Jonah Goldberg: he's really crucial to me" - if you can.
You're thinking of Joe Hill. Which ... Okay.
ReplyDeleteWhen pursued, the beast expels its dung which travels a great distance (as much as two acres)
ReplyDeleteCan it make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs?
Joe Hill is just fine.
ReplyDeleteI'd favor his Boz Scaggs cover, "Cheeto Shuffle."
ReplyDeletePossibly they were the Justin Biebers of their day?
ReplyDeleteVery likely someone who isn't familiar with chav culture.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that it hasn't been picked upon because a lot of these assholes are secret monarchists.
ReplyDeleteThat's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do.
ReplyDeleteWow. That was bad even for NRO. I won't go so far as to say she makes Goldberg look like H.L Mencken; maybe David Brooks.
ReplyDeleteI assume panicking about one's own generation's terrible music choices is one of those things that fades with age.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that this particular worldview is largely peculiar to white males, and for me it did fade with age, as I'm an old fogey now who finds appealing hooks in the pop music my nine-year-old listens to. Over and over and over...
10 or 20 years from now the song "same love" will be viewed as important a song as "imagine" and Goldberg & company will be viewed as the last vestiges of institutional racism!
ReplyDelete"Same Love" is soooo bad. Ryan Lewis is pretty good at what he does, though--the horn sample in "Thrift Store" is insidiously catchy, and the instrumental track from "Can't Hold Us" has proven useful for ad directors. It's not good, but it's earworm-y.
ReplyDeleteI'm also not a Jackson fan. My theory in re Jackson is that his one inarguable song is "Billie Jean," in part because it's personal instead of just a world-conquering pop song. It's the one Jackson song that sounds like there's a person behind it.
The funniest thing about Thriller is Jackson's collaboration with Paul McCartney, "The Girl Is Mine." Two of the greatest popular musicians to ever exist on the most successful pop album of all time--and I do love Macca; I won't fully defend this opinion, but my favorite Beatles song is "Penny Lane"--and they managed the worst popular song ever recorded. "The Girl Is Mine" makes Katy Perry look like Richard Wagner.
There's a selection bias, too. Since the good stuff tends to stick around, it's easy to associate one's past with things that still get played (like, say, Nirvana) and not the atrocious stuff that was contemporary with it (Verve Pipe, Live, that band that sounded like Nirvana with the guy who married Gwen Stefani).
ReplyDelete"WHAT IS SHE SAYING?"
ReplyDeleteNothing - it's just that the thought of cracking DFH skulls gives the average RW loon the vapors. The typing after that part is just an autonomic response. ;)
You make statements like that, son, and you'd better ride like the wind.
ReplyDeleteClearly, Weird Al Yankovic has discovered the secret to time travel, and went back in time to release his tribute to Jonah, "Eat It."
ReplyDelete(As a bonus, it's a Michael Jackson parody for everyone having trouble digesting some of the erstwhile King of Pop's oeuvre.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcJjMnHoIBI
One thing I don't understand: Acres are units of area, not distance, so... Oh heck, I'm questioning the accuracy of a medieval bestiary. Hwæt?!
ReplyDeleteFoster Brooks.
ReplyDeletePerhaps these are more her style.
ReplyDeleteI had the opposite experience. My girlfriend found it hysterical that I knew Like a Virgin from the Lords of the New Church cover and had never actually heard any other version until she put the radio on a top 40 station.
ReplyDeleteYou're the best, tigrismus.
ReplyDeletehttp://25.media.tumblr.com/1a5d56e08514cedb74a35147cfb6a867/tumblr_mu5vqovwqw1rqxd5ko1_1280.jpg
ReplyDeleteBetsy Woodruff stands athwart pop culture yelling "I don't get it!"
ReplyDeleteDamn, now that's really a cold ass honkey.
ReplyDeleteDaniel D'Addario at Salon was on that kick too. A lot of that site's music/movie/TV writing is about as anhedonic as what you'd read at NRO, if not as splashily stuoid.
ReplyDeleteShe's an Antipodean, she's going to give a fuck about hip-hop culture?
ReplyDeleteDissing my main main Tony G? Why, you ... center-left American liberal.
ReplyDelete