Can't It Just Be Music?
Hi, I'm Rich Lowry, and I just want to be a guy. Can you help me?
I'm sorry, but I have difficulty taking East Coast conservative "intellectual" Rich Lowry seriously when he carries on about country music and all that it represents about the culture.
And I'm even more amused that he pulls "cultural critic" Stanley Kurtz into the argument (we refer to social anthropologist Stanley Kurtz as General Kurtz elsewhere, as the good social anthropologist has a know-it-all way of writing about topics he knows NOTHING about that is particularly annoying).
Truth is, if you dropped General Kurtz or Richie Lowry into the middle of the Firehouse (or even Montrose's West Alabama Icehouse) on a busy Friday night, those two east coast intellectuals would be noticeably uncomfortable. And when our buddy Randy Rogers started railing (however subtly) on the Texas death penalty during his fine song The Ballad Of Stanley, their own little stereotypes about the heartland and country music and the culture would break down pretty quickly. Gawd forbid we drop 'em in the middle of Steve Earle's performance at the International Festival this weekend!
There's no great point here, other than that I wish certain columnists and "cultural critics" (or armchair generals) knew a little bit more about the topics they choose.
Futher, it strikes me that someone needs to send some decent country music to National Review. If Darryl Worley's vomit represents all that is good in the National Review/Richie/General Kurtz musical universe, that's very very sad.
[Posted at 08:00 CST on 05/02/03] [Link]
