Liberal Music Rant

As whiny-ass liberals go, I like Orson Scott Card. I have his “Uncle Orson Reviews Everything” site on my sidebar, and I recommend it. We would have some disagreements if we met in person. Mr. Card supports sensible gun control. I think gun control means being able to shoot like Josey Wales and Rooster Cogburn. I think an armed society is a polite society and if I am sometimes not wearing my handgun it’s because I don’t have to worry about my khukri running out of ammo. Mr. Card, though a Democrat, fully understands and supports our mission in Iraq and the overall war on terror – God bless him. I’d cut him a great deal of slack on that alone.

I have a copy of Ender’s Game, and I think Mr. Card is a very fine writer.

But now he has done something to irritate me, having gone too far in his devotion to Janis Ian (see his review of Ian's autobiography here). OSC and I are about the same age. We both heard Janis Ian sing “At Seventeen” on the radio in the top-40 rotation. He went out and bought the album. To be honest, as a teenager, I battled depression and self-loathing. Nevertheless, on my darkest, most self-hating day I would not have actually paid money to have a Janis Ian record, not even the buck for a 45 (note to younger readers – a “45” does not in this case refer to the caliber of my Colt nor Billy Dee Williams’ brand of malt liquor – it was an analog recording of a single song on each side pressed onto vinyl played at 45 rpm’s rather than 33 and 1/3).

Now I am quite sure, as Mr. Card claims, that Janis Ian is a very nice, even likeable person. The two of them have become friends. I am glad for them. I will even go so far as to suspect that somewhere in Ms. Ian’s repertoire there might be a song I like. OSC mentioned a song of hers called “Boots Like Emmylou’s”. (This gives me the cherished opportunity to say, “Emmylou, I love you.”) Still, there are those hurdles to listening to Janis Ian that I simply cannot overcome – “At Seventeen” and “Society’s Child”.

This was called folk music – I think – because no one really wanted to take responsibility for it – it was just “folk”. Ms. Ian’s songs were humorless, self-absorbed, self-important and self-pitying. Her perspective was that of an ugly, unpopular seventeen year old girl who is not going to get asked to go to the prom with the quarterback. In response she points out that the homecoming queens and cheerleaders will get old. Mr. Card finds this insightful and powerful. For some reason, the phrase “sour grapes” came to mind when I heard the same song. And it was so damned whiny! About 30 seconds into a Janis Ian song and I was ready to stick a white hot poker in my ear to sear the eardrum.

You just knew that if this little drama-queen wannabe were somehow suddenly transformed into a slender, acne-free teen angel she would immediately dump the soulful, angst-y worldview into the koi pond and be at the mall shopping for a prom dress with matching shoes and bag.

All that said, at least songs like “At Seventeen” are so depressing and unmusical that they never become earworms like the worst song ever recorded: “Seasons in the Sun”. If that guy is still alive, he should be dressed up for a San Francisco gay pride parade and air-dropped over Taliban headquarters.

Janis Ian music is liberal music, and, I suspect that Ms. Ian is a leftist. Liberals pine for the fjords – I mean, for equality. They do not want equality of opportunity. They want equality of outcome. Now the truth is the protagonist of “At Seventeen” was not in some communist labor camp. She was an intelligent, artistic person living in freedom in the greatest country on earth. She had the opportunity to be happy, as much as the little blonde, brain-dead cheerleader she so envied and hated. Instead, she chose to be miserable, to wallow in self-pity and make her world far darker than it really was.

She whined about “the valentines that never came.” Hey, did you ever try sending one to somebody? Don’t tell me there weren’t any geek boys in the chess club you could have dated? How about making the best of your life like the rest of us have to do? How about getting over yourself? Having once been a boy, I can say that your existential angst and perpetual whining is a real turn-off.

OK, perhaps I am much shallower than Orson Scott Card. I will concede that. But with all the darkness and evil in the world, is it too much to ask that music be, like, not so dark? And it’s not that I am opposed to sad music. One of the traditional themes of bluegrass music is something like: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy kills girl and goes to prison. It is not, however, self-pitying. No where in any song on my MP3 player is there expressed an idea as narcissistic as “I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens.” No, it’s just wrong. It is not a universal truth. It is just that you didn’t think you could get a date with the point guard on the basketball team or the centerfielder.

Honestly, the most popular girl in my class had a face that belonged on the cover of MAD magazine. We liked her because she had a sense of humor and did not take herself SO seriously.

The leftists sometimes refer to those who are “winners in life’s lottery”. Like Janis Ian they think that beauty, or intelligence, talent, initiative, drive, etc. means that you have rolled a seven and that ugly people rolled snake eyes. Actually, I think I dated the girl that rolled snake eyes, but that’s another story. The protagonist of Ian’s song said that since she couldn’t be “popular” by her narrow definition then the “truth” was that people with blemishes and imperfections were not meant to be loved. Get real. Leftists, of all people, should know better than this. You could have a rear-end by Clydesdale and legs by Steinway and Bill Clinton would hit on you.

If we let other people define us by our appearance, abilities, whatever, then we will be miserable. If, instead, we accept our lives as gifts from God and opportunities to embrace the grace, we will be happy. And, while I’m at it, God bless Bill Monroe.