* RADIO RANT: "The man that hath no music"

Michael Savage was harping on the 60's hippies movement again last night (5/22/07), as the major impetus of contemporary liberalism—itself the ruination of the nation. As a true conservative, Savage even asserted that Plato was right in kicking all the poets and musicians out his his ideal Republic. (An overgeneralization: music of certain less "emotional," more "rational," modes [scales] would still be allowed, if I recall. But no doubt the modern "blues" scale would be verboten.) Plato was "on to something," Savage continued, because artists (read: liberal artists) have always been dangerous to "family" values and social order.

But if you've read Plato's Republic, it's pretty clear that this conservative utopia borders on a police state, run by philosopher-kings whose claim to a greater rationalism is only rivaled by certain contemporary radio-talk-show hosts; social order would be maintained by a military class (the "brawn" to the elite rulers' "brains"), who would keep the workers in line, since this third class could only be mindless bundles of emotions & appetencies (cf. the "lower animals" in Orwell's allegory).

Yes, by God, I'd keep Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix out of the ears of such masses, so easily turned by metaphor and melody. Let them only read (if allowed to do so) lame treatises in support of the party line: this is Savage's true calling, after all, to provide the propagandistic accoutrements for a latter-day politbureau; and as in Stalin's day, such soporifics would be officially dubbed the only "good"—because "true"—art.

Finally, it was rather strange that Savage put forth—uh—Joan Baez?? as the epitome of 60's aesthetic radicalism. The bourgeois coffee-house drivel that was much "folk-rock" of that day was already smug co-optation, the kind of the stuff Savage himself probably enjoyed at one time. I prefer(red) "hippie" music that employed a distortion pedal, at least; but that, too, was quickly co-opted, as "Purple Haze" became a bumper tune for Rush Limbaugh—and (later) Metallica, a musical segue for the Savage-meister himself {1}.  [Impromptu Quot. of the Day: "You know you're gettin' old when your favorite teen-age-rebellious rock anthems start showin' up as background music to car & ketchup commercials." --TCG]  So, really—NOT TO WORRY, Mr. Savage: the radical artists that you fear have damned little chance to "corrupt the morals of the youth" when the youth are corrupted from the crib already, interpellated into the Law of the Father from day one. . . . Quot. of the Day:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
    --Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice 5.1)

{1} In fact, one wonders why all that speed/goth/death-metal bumper music is allowed in the great "Republic" that is the "Savage Nation"—a rabid, visceral, arational subtext that rather deconstructs the message of this man who dons a mask of reason.