I confess to being ignorant about a lot of pop music. There are works of some merit in that broad genre, but the effort to cull them out is not very rewarding. They will be culled out soon enough as time and ennui overtake the vast majority. Six months is often sufficient.
But I would rather be ignorant of pop music than ignorant of history. And I would rather be dismissive of the latest rage than dismissive of everything that preceded it.
When I saw the article by Peter Rothberg, “Top Twelve Most Patriotic Songs Ever,” I failed to grasp just how short “ever” might be. Until I saw the lede:
Most Americans are unaware that much of our patriotic culture–including many of the leading icons and symbols of American identity–was created by artists and writers of decidedly left-wing and even socialist sympathies.
Francis Scott Key a leftist? Irving Berlin a subversive? Okay, “Yankee Doodle” has a certain anti-social ring to it, and Katharine Lee Bates was on the faculty of Wellesley, but I never really thought those quirky references to “pilgrim feet” and “fruited plain” would come back to haunt her. Did the invocation of “brotherhood” conjure up communist imagery in Rothberg’s mind?
No, if you were concerned about such possibilities, you would be thinking of a list of the top twelve most patriotic songs ever, rather than a tautological list of recent pop songs written by people of “decidedly left-wing and even socialist sympathies.” Many of the songs on Rothberg’s list are works I have managed to avoid contact with altogether, although Rothberg threw in a little Woody Guthrie and Earl Robinson as a sop to history.
One has to be truly lost in the present to confuse “our patriotic culture” and “leading icons” with Jefferson Airplane and the Dave Matthews Band.
Or perhaps Rothberg, a writer for The Nation (a journal manned by writers of decidedly left-wing and even socialist sympathies) simply mistakes the culture and icons of The Nation for those of America.
But what a great idea for an article! Perhaps Rothberg could next claim that the greatest religious texts ever written were penned by atheists, and proceed to list his favorite passages from Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens. Heck, throw in Nietzsche to demonstrate historic perspective. Aquinas, St. John Chrysostom . . . who are they?
So when you are tempted to pooh-pooh people who believe everything in the universe was created in the last 6,000 years, pity instead the leftists who believe everything that matters was created in their lifetime.
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