O.D. to Joy
Like many another dog-paddler across that vast sea of human blanks calling itself the American Right, for whom the humanities are merely one more excuse to self-dehumanize over the long twilit struggle for power against enemies who always and everywhere reduce to those visible in the shaving mirror, Ben Shapiro ("Top 10 Overrated Songs of All Time", Big Hollywood) can't quite pull off a passable simulacrum of a man for whom a familiarity with the art of really enjoying himself is first nature. Think of those ladies' ads in the often justifiably-lonely-hearts columns that, rather than striking a positive note in personal distinction, take the generic form of demanding that "no losers, creeps, mama's boys, druggies, deadbeats, cheaters or players need apply – I'm sick and tired of dating frogs." What man with an IQ, whether ethical or aesthetic, even marginally above room temperature responds to such ads with anything other than the deathless cry of the cashier, "Next, please."?
My own approach when dealing with music, by contrast to ham-handed junior-varsity red-baiting agitprop of a sort that recalls Bob Tyrrell of The American Spectator with a splitting and infectious migraine (Shapiro: "Aside from being the perfect set-up for "Who's on First," which is eminently more entertaining than most of the Who's music, the Who have provided us with very little of value"), entails moving beyond such proverbial and overxposed Boomer set-pieces as those lampooned by Shapiro with such artless and unwitty pathos, the better to place front and center and with giddy abandon the glory that was The Who Sell Out and A Quick One (Happy Jack), and the grandeur that was Sandinista!, Marquee Moon, and Dancer With Bruised Knees, and leave the uniformed warfare in matters of culture to the Gomer Pyles and Sad Sacks of the Breitbart empire, bravely advancing over the whole of their terms of service, with no thought whatever for their own personal safety in the blood-swimming blogospheric trenches, along a front that resembles nothing so much as the humanist answer to KP duty.
Not that the blowing of the raspberry cannot be done, and done well, whatever the precinct, but it demands a kinetic lift unto buoyancy, ideally with an amused and stoic tolerance, or it risks souring into a didactic earnestness within ten yards past the starting gate. Here's H.L. Mencken in "Lachrymose Love", a review in The Smart Set from 1915:
Have you tears? Do you leak easily? Are you a weeper? Then wrap yourself in a shower-bath curtain before you sit down to "INNOCENT" by Marie Corelli (Doran), for the tale wrings the lachrymal ducts with exquisite and diabolical art. Sadness, indeed, stalks through it like some great murrain through the countryside; it is a sure cure for joy in every form. I myself, a mocker at all sweet and lovely things, a professional snickerer, a saucy fellow by trade, have moaned and blubbered over it like a fat woman at "La Dame aux Camélias." My waistcoat is a sponge. My beard is white with salt. My eyes are a brilliant scarlet. My nose glowers and glitters with pink flames. I have blown it two hundred and eighteen times ...
My own approach when dealing with music, by contrast to ham-handed junior-varsity red-baiting agitprop of a sort that recalls Bob Tyrrell of The American Spectator with a splitting and infectious migraine (Shapiro: "Aside from being the perfect set-up for "Who's on First," which is eminently more entertaining than most of the Who's music, the Who have provided us with very little of value"), entails moving beyond such proverbial and overxposed Boomer set-pieces as those lampooned by Shapiro with such artless and unwitty pathos, the better to place front and center and with giddy abandon the glory that was The Who Sell Out and A Quick One (Happy Jack), and the grandeur that was Sandinista!, Marquee Moon, and Dancer With Bruised Knees, and leave the uniformed warfare in matters of culture to the Gomer Pyles and Sad Sacks of the Breitbart empire, bravely advancing over the whole of their terms of service, with no thought whatever for their own personal safety in the blood-swimming blogospheric trenches, along a front that resembles nothing so much as the humanist answer to KP duty.
Not that the blowing of the raspberry cannot be done, and done well, whatever the precinct, but it demands a kinetic lift unto buoyancy, ideally with an amused and stoic tolerance, or it risks souring into a didactic earnestness within ten yards past the starting gate. Here's H.L. Mencken in "Lachrymose Love", a review in The Smart Set from 1915:
Have you tears? Do you leak easily? Are you a weeper? Then wrap yourself in a shower-bath curtain before you sit down to "INNOCENT" by Marie Corelli (Doran), for the tale wrings the lachrymal ducts with exquisite and diabolical art. Sadness, indeed, stalks through it like some great murrain through the countryside; it is a sure cure for joy in every form. I myself, a mocker at all sweet and lovely things, a professional snickerer, a saucy fellow by trade, have moaned and blubbered over it like a fat woman at "La Dame aux Camélias." My waistcoat is a sponge. My beard is white with salt. My eyes are a brilliant scarlet. My nose glowers and glitters with pink flames. I have blown it two hundred and eighteen times ...
Frekki|
Cool writing, you're still an asshole though.
DSL.|
I have a caustic way of speaking. I am much cleverer than other people, and I'm not afraid to let them know it. There are probably good reasons why I excite the antipathy of right-wing imbeciles.
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