The Joy of Hate

by Greg Gutfeld

  And this crap is happening even before college. Let’s go to Schuylkill Valley High School (something I often say to myself) in Leesport, Pennsylvania, where, according to the Reading Eagle, two students were banned from walking across the stage during their graduation because they had donned military sashes, given to them by evil army recruiters as a way to honor their up-and-coming military service. You think these kids would’ve gotten the same reaction if they were wearing antiwar buttons?

  So what’s wrong with the folks who banned the sashes? Nothing—they just suck. Brainwashed by the last thirty years of PC dogma, they’re suffering from the backward paralysis of tolerance: I’m sure if the two students had decided to arrive cross-dressed as their favorite Golden Girl, it would have been perfectly fine. I would have been fine with both, actually. I am a fan of both the military and the Golden Girls. Both were tough bastards.

  But apparently the superintendent of the high school claimed they didn’t want to honor one group and disappoint another. What a big, giant pussy.

  Now, I could ask why so many academics suck. The answer would be, they’re jerks, pure and simple. But instead, I imagine these people just don’t know anyone who served in the military, and therefore believe the military cannot be a good thing. Remember, deconstructing Moby-Dick as a homoerotic thesis is far more important than eradicating the number-one threat to our way of life. Cocooned in their own world, surrounded by people who agree with them, they cannot imagine anyone finding their opinions unoriginal—or, better, repulsive. They deserve a one-way ticket to some hellhole where only the military they detest so strongly can extract them (I’m thinking Walmart on Black Friday). They should be forced to squat in a desert gully and explain to armed enemy combatants whose minds are in the seventh century why their understanding of “the whiteness of the whale” means he shouldn’t be executed.

  But the lesson learned for all of us is simple and obvious: Tolerance can only be applied to certain groups deemed appropriate by the left. You can tolerate criminals. You can sympathize with brutal thugs on death row. You can even argue that society is guilty for encouraging the crimes of even our worst offenders. But if you choose to serve your country, you lose all rights to be tolerated and do not even deserve a free wet wipe. And that, my friend, is the sound of a civilization turning on itself.

  THE SONG REMAINS SO LAME

  THE BIGGEST LIE IN POP CULTURE? Rock stars are rebels. Please, they’re about as edgy as Hostess Snowballs. Case in point: Whenever there’s an election, and Republicans are looking for music for their campaign events, you see the same stupid story rear its stupid head. A candidate will use a song in an ad, by aging everyman Bruce Springsteen, or Tom Petty (who is beginning to look like your aunt Sally, assuming your aunt Sally is a cabbage), and what follows is a “how dare they!” uproar—not just from the artists themselves but from the media, too. In sum, they are saying, “Hold on a second, you dorky right-winger! You do not have a free pass with pop culture! Sure, you enjoy much of the same stuff we do, but unlike us, you aren’t cool. And when you aren’t cool—well, then, we don’t have to tolerate you. Yep, we will tolerate almost anything, but not you listening to Fleetwood Mac.” (Which actually hasn’t been cool since the Carter administration.)

  The entertainment industry hates the uncool (read: the right) so much that if a maniacal leader arose from the left to announce he would send the uncool to “how to be cool” camps, no one in a band would raise an objection. They’re all about peace and love, as long as it’s their peace and love. But if you voted for Bush, you should probably die. Horribly, perhaps by listening to Fleetwood Mac. I’d say about six minutes of any Stevie Nicks solo album should do it.

  Back in 2008, running against Barack Obama, the coolest of the cool, Senator John McCain’s campaign decided to use the song “Running on Empty,” by doe-eyed simpleton Jackson Browne. McCain ended up having to settle out of court with Browne for not asking permission first (thus providing Browne with his first revenue since 1982). Both the Foo Fighters (that band with the guy from that other band where the dude blew his brains out) and John Cougar Mellencamp (three names linked together to spell “crap”) also told McCain to stop using their stuff. And in the 2012 campaign Tom Petty sent a “cease and desist” letter to Michele Bachmann, telling her to stop playing “American Girl.” Now this could all be just a legal maneuver—an attempt to block people from using your music without paying—but funny that Obama didn’t have that problem. He could have chosen any song from the last fifty years and you know the band would have given interviews talking about how “proud and honored” they were. If you remember (and I do), Springsteen was outraged Reagan used “Born in the U.S.A.” in his campaign. (I wonder if Springsteen feels differently now that everyone in what was once called the Soviet Union can buy his songs with a click of a finger.) And as I edit this book, Dee Snider, front man and aged crone from Twisted Sister, just demanded that the Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan stop using their one and only decent song, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” on his campaign stops. To be sure, a gratified America quietly applauded the news.

  Does this happen on the other side? Do pop stars get upset when a lefty uses their song to get votes? I haven’t heard of a single case, but Obama used “The Rising” without Springsteen caring, Bill Clinton played Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” until our ears bled through our noses, and John Edwards played “Our Country” by John Cougar Mellancamp during his ill-fated campaign, without a peep. These musicians were apparently outraged by the right’s desire to use their music, but okay with Edwards? John Edwards, adulturer, liar, and weirdo. I’ve seen holograms more real than this ambulance-chasing lowlife. That this sociopath gets an easier time from the music industry than a war hero like John McCain tells you everything you need to know about dumbass rock stars.

  So what do all these bands have in common? They love to see themselves as truly tolerant, but if they ever ran into someone who voted conservative and happened to like their music, they’d probably hit them in the face with their freshly purchased copy of Dreams from My Father. So why does musicians’ tolerance only flow one way? Well, perhaps they know that if one of their songs shows up in Republican ads, they will get an army of cold shoulders at a Brentwood cocktail party, or worse, one less blow job from a groupie. And in a way, I don’t blame them. If I were an artist, I wouldn’t want my music associated with any political figure—unless, of course, we exhumed Ronald Reagan and ran him again. But they should operate this method of intolerance for both parties: no one can use my music, period.

  That doesn’t happen. And this means something more than just what’s played in stupid commercials or rallies. Fact is, the real war over hearts and minds these days is not in politics but in pop culture. As Andrew Breitbart once said, politics is downstream from pop culture, not the other way way around.

  You can tell your kids day and night to be good people—don’t do drugs and or have sex with their ninth-grade teachers—but you’re up against some serious competition: Lady Gaga, hip-hop, and anything that passes for entertainment on MTV. Bottom line: What is considered cool is everything you find detrimental to sound living. And boring.

  The problem here is that lefties don’t grow out of this phase. For most of us, our vision of what is “cool” is established when we’re adolescents. But by the time you’re in your mid-twenties or so, you should start to realize that what was cool at seventeen should be decidely less so. Certainly by thirty you should be out of your parents’ basement. But the hard left somehow manages to see what the rest of us call “growing up” as “selling out.” “Hey, if Mellancamp Cougar John can have his adolescence extended indefinitely, why can’t I?” Because you’re not a millionaire rock star, ya jackass. You’re a mailroom clerk with two kids who probably shouldn’t have so many Coldplay posters up in his bedroom.

  And as for the musicians themselves, let’s face facts: what substitutes for hits and genuine cultural relevance for fading roc
k stars is strident political statements. Outrage at the right’s use of a former rock star’s music is really “Let me make as much noise about this as I can, because I’m one step from an oldies revue on the outskirts of Branson.” Or put more simply, “Hey, remember me? I matter!” It’s selling out, but in a way that’s acceptable to the left.

  But the real truth: Being conservative is a rebellion against predictable rebellion. It’s more daring to be traditional than to subvert tradition.

  Musicians don’t want righties using their music, but would they demand you take off the shirt that has their name on it? Unless you had great breasts, no, because that money goes right into their designer pockets. Point is, they make a stand, when they’re not being paid. Bruce will still take your money when you buy that overpriced ticket to Madison Square Garden, whether you voted for Obama or not.

  As a host of a late-night show, I’ve seen the convulsions that occur when I have someone “cool” on. After I had a reviewer of alternative music on my show, a legendary alt-rock producer ripped him for coming on. In effect, this was no different from the high school head cheerleader telling you not to hang out with the chess club.

  When I had the Florida metal band known as Torche on the same show, similar crap occurred. Torche is an amazing doom metal/pop hybrid, making some of the best music in the world, if you had that kind of childhood. Their lead singer, Steve Brooks, is like a gay version of Jack Black, only more talented and charming. And hairier. I wanted to capture how cool they were as a band, so I created a video about the band. It went crazy on the Web, as all truly subversive things should. But some people in pop circles were disgusted by what they could not understand. This just didn’t fit into their comfy worldview. How could you link a metal band that has a gay singer to a crazy rightie like me? My answer is, You pukes—why not? I’m a right-wing nut and I’m far more tolerant, it turns out, than edgy music bloggers who shoot pool, listen to bootlegs of early Can, and make no money while their girlfriends grow exceedingly exhausted by their promises of self-sufficiency someday. My God, if we knew the Internet would lead to such a raft of self-indulgent pointlessness, we might have asked Al Gore to come up with something else.

  There was nothing funnier than watching the liberal convulsion on the music blogs when it was discovered that Moe Tucker, of the legendary band The Velvet Underground, turned out to be a modern-day Tea Partier. If you don’t know her, she was the drummer for the hippest band of all time, managed by Andy Warhol, with members including Lou Reed, Nico, and John Cale. It was an inspiration to disaffected slackers, no band was cooler, and just about every group you hear these days ripped them off. Me, I am a huge fan of anything that sounds like them, even if I find Lou Reed about as charming as a cat in a blender. Which is an apt description of his collaboration with Metallica.

  But in 2010, bloggers found out that Moe had hit a Tea Party rally, where, like everyone else there, she railed against the direction of this country. The problem was, she didn’t fall into the typical definition of the liberal-approved Tea Party stereotype. Moe is way more subversive than the critics of the Tea Party ever could be. So what happens when the coolest cucumber rejects those precious values held by the vintage-T-shirt-wearing, status quo left? Let repressive tolerance commence. Here are a few laments from web-based whiners after discovering Moe ain’t like her (or him), and worse—that she had possibly worked at Walmart:

  I was really really heartbroken cause I love her solo albums and had always interpreted the lyrics to be fairly liberal. I am spending the day in mourning for Moe.

  I wouldn’t put it past Wal-Mart to put an additive in the employee’s water fountains that turns them into tea-partiers.

  (One wonders what additives this writer has been adding to her water.)

  Of course, once hipsters arbitrarily decide that Walmart is cool to shop at, things will change. Remember how low-class Pabst Blue Ribbon was? Now it’s in every hand of every dweeb trying to grow a beard in Brooklyn.

  Here’s another:

  Lots of working stiffs are Tea Party members, more fools they, so if indeed it’s Tucker she’s just getting shafted by a new boss now.

  (“More fools they”? Okay there, Falstaff.)

  Yep, she made music you loved, but now that she doesn’t share your assumptions about politics, she must be stupid, a fool, brainwashed by “the man.” I’m telling you, we should’ve told Gore, “No thanks.” Here’s a more sympathetic comment:

  I still love Moe … I can only hope that she, like so many others, are being misled into voting against their own interests. Love you Moe; don’t be fooled.

  Of course, it would never occur to that writer that she might be the one fooled. I mean, could it be that Moe realized how bereft of common sense hipster life was, and moved on? I’d bet a hamster that writer was over forty years old. Who cares? It’s Moe who is misled. And therefore she is no longer part of the in crowd.

  So where did the tolerance of “opposing viewpoints” go? Weren’t artists supposed to be truly rebellious—meaning that they should also rebel against the status quo of the hipsters around them? Shouldn’t they be admired for rejecting the litmus test? In short, music bloggers, aren’t you the machine they should be raging against?

  Nope. Apparently the lockstep liberal pop stars and their slavish followers must ensure that every single pop legend shares their oh-so-predictable worldview. If you don’t, you’re obviously misguided. This ostracism—intolerance from the self-proclaimed open-minded—is driven not by the coolness they believe only they possess but by a sheep mentality—something real rebels would openly mock.

  Now, caution: we’re about to enter a name-dropping zone.

  As a former punker, I found nothing more glorious than when Johnny Rotten showed up to do my three AM show. This man, in my opinion, is the greatest rebel in modern music. The Sex Pistols created the singular antiestablishment record of their age—something that has never been repeated and probably never will be. No one, in my mind, was cooler than Rotten—he was smart, scary, and funny—and the songs were awesome. When he told me how much he enjoyed doing the show, I almost died. We went out drinking until the wee hours of the morning at a local Irish bar, and he told me how much he hates hippies and hipsters. I realized the guy I had posters of on my wall when I was in my teens felt like me. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think Rotten was a conservative. I doubt he labels himself at all, and he really likes Obama. But I don’t think he trafficked in the repressive tolerance that flourishes around him to this day. He just hates phonies.

  When I drank beer with Billy Zoom, the legendary guitarist from the L.A. punk band X, and found a like-minded soul, I realized how cool “cool” really was. Zoom is a taciturn fellow whose stoic guitar stance transforms him into a far cooler icon than James Dean. This guy shits cool. And even his shit shits cool.

  And he’s about as liberal as Allen West. The same goes for Joe Escalante, who’s been on my show many times. A founder of The Vandals, Escalante is both a punker and a bullfighter—but also a Catholic, and a God-fearing one at that. He’s so punk that other punkers steer clear of him. I almost forgive him for being a bass player.

  I am still a slave to pop culture. I listen to nothing but punk, metal, and obscure electronica. I watch weird movies in the middle of the night, and I continue to fight the war against hipster intolerance by persuading my favorite bands to come on my show. I’m pretty sure I helm the only show on any news cable channel to have Fucked Up, the essential Canadian punk band, as a guest. They’re as left-wing as you can get, but I adore their music.

  But in this war, I found a cohort in the battle—Gavin McInnes, the founder of Vice magazine, a subversive piece of filth that erupted in the nineties and became the hipster bible. But as a hipster, Gavin does not hold to the hipster code. He does not think Obama is a savior. And he hates big government. He’s a conservative-leaning libertarian who thinks drugs should be legal and supports Occupy Wall Street—although at the same t
ime condemning self-destructive stoners and anarchic violence. He writes frequently on the necessities of hard work, and how young adults these days are more interested in looking cool than actually “doing” cool things. He’s covered in tattoos but raises his kids like a normal dad, and finds no pleasure in anyone denigrating others for being “weird.” Gavin is a hipster, but he’s also the hardest-working capitalist I know (I just wish he wouldn’t strip so often in public). When I took him to an event for conservatives in the entertainment world, I joked about how nerdy it was. He frowned at me and said, “I’ve been around hip all my life. I’ll take this over that. This is good.” It’s like he knew, instantly, what real noncomformity was—and it has nothing to do with tattoos, nose rings, or shouting “the world is watching” at cops. I felt bad that I was embarrassed.

  Nobody got this more than Andrew Breitbart. It was his mission, in a way, to call bullshit on the whole facile notion of “cool” being the defining principle for adult behavior. Cool sucks. And Andy knew it. So does Gavin. And Johnny. And Billy. And that makes them way cooler than anyone else I knew, or know.

  Among phony hipsters, tolerance for other people ends where their fear of real rebellion begins. “Hip” people who happen to be conservative tend to reject the stereotypical “hip” assumptions, and therefore are the least tolerated phenomenon you will find. According to the sheep with nose rings, you can’t possibly love The Clash and have voted for Bush (I did). You can’t possibly have seen Gang of Four and sung along to every song, then worked at The American Spectator (I did). There’s no way you are obsessed with both the Melvins and Congressman Allen West (that’s me). The fact is, these hipster weasels don’t get those possibilities, because they reject real, authentic rebellion. The people they hate are truly authentic in their questioning, in their rebellion—and they are not.