Rock 'n Roll in the Obama Era: The Ass-Kissing Years

You know, when you do something really stupid late at night, like read Henry Rollins’ Dispatches section on his website, and you come across his characterization of the tea parties happening around the country as “Small groups of grouchy white people acting out and being ridiculous,” not only do you realize that Rollins is a self-hating grouchy white person, but also that we have entered a whole new era of Rock ‘n Roll: The Ass-Kissing Years.

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Where this… meets this.

Now let me get this straight: there are a number of protests by free citizens who think the government confiscates too much of their money and spends it unwisely, and the angry rock anarchist Henry Rollins is on the government’s side? What the hell happened to Rollins? He was head of the band Black Flag in the 80s, a hell-raising, system-smashing anarchist punk band. He wrote songs like Family Man, and lyrics like “swimming in the mainstream is such a lame dream,” for crying out loud. But now, in his dotage, he spends his time ridiculing anyone who speaks up against the almighty State, and calling out anyone who refuses to kiss Presidential ass with him now that his guy won. Then again, maybe he’s just feeling guilty and trying to make up for writing White Minority way back when.

Sadly it’s not just Rollins. John Mellencamp recently incoherently blamed Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics for ruining the music business, proving that he knows nothing about economics or the music business (which might explain why he hasn’t had a hit since he covered a Van Morrison song fifteen years ago). Oh, wait; unless you count that Chevrolet commercial, where Mellencamp became a tool for an evil American corporation by singing a song pretending that he loves America, a double scoop of hypocrisy with sprinkles and whipped cream that is so rich and multi-layered that it’s hard to stomach all at once.

Bruce Springsteen pushed his 2007 album “Magic” on “60 Minutes” by foolishly reciting a list of President Bush’s “crimes,” including illegal wiretapping and “no habeas corpus“, and yet now that President Obama has continued these very same policies (making them not only legal, but possibly divine), the Boss’s mouth has been noticeably shut, probably because it’s very hard to speak when your lips are fervently puckered up and moving respectfully toward the nearest powerful Democrat’s ass.

Jon Bon Jovi, among other distasteful acts of sucking up to various Democrats, went on Larry King in 2006 and called Al Gore “the smartest man I’ve ever met…. We do get together socially and I just sit in awe of him.”

Good Grief, Jon, what happened to “Livin’ On a Prayer“? What an anthem of self-reliance that was! “We’re halfway there, take my hand, we’ll make it I swear?” Now you’re sitting in AWE of some hack politician who won’t even turn off his own lights for Earth Hour? Mellencamp? What happened to “I fight authority, authority always wins“? “Ain’t that America, home of the free”? And Springsteen? What happened to “I’ve got this guitar and I’m learning how to make it talk”? Did a government program teach you to play, Bruce? “This is a town full of losers/and I’m pulling out of here to win”? If the government guarantees that there will be no losers, how the hell will anyone ever win?

What happened to the rock and roll I grew up with that was about freedom and individuality, about working for a living, taking pride in your independence, making your own way, not letting anybody tell you what to do, etc. etc.? Or even about “YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY,” for God’s sake? What happened to good old-fashioned rock ‘n roll rebellion? When did these big rockers, who made it by their talent and their hard work, with no help from the government, all turn into big government-worshipping statists?

Maybe Rollins and Springsteen and Mellencamp and all the other members of the new breed of hell-raising rock ‘n roll ass-kissers were never the big rebels we thought they were. Maybe they never believed that stuff they sang about. Maybe the whole point for them, all along, was just to be popular. Maybe they were just guys suffering from short-man syndrome who wanted everybody to love them and think they were cool. And now, since they’ve lost the knack for writing cool songs that people dig, they have found the ultimate easy path to coolness just by being a cool Obama supporter.

But then again, maybe it’s not even that complicated. Maybe they’re not that unique, even though they can sing and play the guitar. Maybe they are just some typical self-righteous liberals, who think to themselves, “I am so great because I voted for that BLACK GUY! He was BLACK, and I’m so cool and non-racist that I voted for him ANYWAY! And look at all those RACISTS over there who voted AGAINST the BLACK guy! I am SO much way cooler than them!” They call conservatives who have a principled stand against Obama’s policies racist, when in fact it is they for whom it is all about race.

Because there are basically two kinds of Obama voters:

1) True believers who want a powerful, totalitarian state that enforces fairness by confiscating property from one American and giving it to another, and that provides all basic needs for every American so that noone suffers, and…

2) People who don’t really care what Obama does or says, and just like him because they think it makes them cool.

You can at least respect the former as adversaries. The latter are just trifling thinkers, who don’t care if their President quadruples the spending of the last President, or if he sends more troops into battle. Because it’s not about policy to them. It’s about how Obama makes them feel.

So pucker up, all you aging rockers out there. It’s a new, exciting time in rock history. Gone are the days when the Young Rascals sang “People Got To Be Free” :

All the world over, so easy to see

People everywhere just wanna be free

I can’t understand it, so simple to me

People everywhere just got to be free

If there’s a man who is down and needs a helping hand

All it takes is you to understand and to see him through

Seems to me, we got to solve it individually

And I’ll do unto you what you do to me

There’ll be shoutin’ from the mountains on out to sea

(out to the sea)

No two ways about it, people have to be free

(they got to be free)



Sadly, these Old Rascals, like Springsteen and Mellencamp and the others, are singing a much different tune these days, and it goes something like, “People everywhere, just kiss ass like me!”