Tuna Lick Fringe

There's a post here. It's related to my open letter to Springsteen the other day.

First, though, I need to give a disclaimer, a theory, and a snark.

Disclaimer: There are some decent leftyblogs in the Twin Cities. I disagree with 'em, but I don't feel the need to gargle with benzene after reading the best of them. Jason from rphaedrus, Carson from Moderatesomethingorother, and Luke Francl from, er, Luke Francl's blog are all decent writers.

Theory: Some bloggers think that if they take shots at bloggers with more traffic, it'll drive traffic their way. To some, the more puerile and pathetic the shot, the better they think they'll do.

Snark: I ran across one of them. I'm not going to link back, partly because the blogger in question, who describes himself as "married, father of a two-year old, living in Saint Paul", whose blog gets about ten hits a month is so obviously trying to get a rise (in traffic) out of the Northern Alliance. Easily half of the postings I read took some sort of shot at one of my colleagues or another. Nah, I won't go into details; it's not so much that it was funny, interesting or well written (it wasn't); it was just depressing, like when you pick up some religious nutjob's tract from under your windshield wiper on Sunday Morning and realize they probably think they're worth reading.

Anyway, if you want to find it, it's not that hard - but still not worth it.

But the blogger wrote a little screed about Tuesday's open letter. I figured I'd answer, just because it touches on a couple of things I run into all the time.

The Vote for Change tour has our local cadre of balding, right-wing scribes

Who you calling "scribe", punk?

in a particularly undies-binding snit. With panties firmly ensconced in buttcrack, [Cicero weeps - Ed.] Mitch pens this diatribe to his rock-n-roll hero:

I'll omit the pull quote from my piece.

Diatribe?

Jesus balls, what a snide, condescending load of crap.

In one sentence he chides Springsteen for selling-out to the so-called showbiz elite (what exactly is that anyway?) and a couple of paragraphs later he scolds him for maintaining his core value system all these years.

And of course, I do no such thing. As I've said many, many times, I could care less about an artist's core beliefs. Read my piece for yourself and make up your own mind.

Onward:

I sense if Mitch had his way, Nebraska would be re-recorded to reflect a pro-death penalty, anti-tax sensibility. What an inspiring work that would be.

Ah. A clairvoyant. A clairvoyant who giggles at "Buttcrack" jokes.

He's wrong, of course. Nebraska is an amazing record, as is. It came out about the time I was starting to ditch liberalism, of course - but for all that, it still resonated. The stories, like the arid prairie on the album cover, sounded and looked like the people and places I knew; truckers, waitresses, people cold-cocked by life, isolated in the middle of the great wide-open. The album was for me what "Sergeant Pepper" was to your typical baby boomer - a huge influence, and a marker in my life.

Sort of like "buttcrack" is for Mr. Blog...

Yes, I think the spirit of rock-n-roll is best served by ditching the rebellious 'tude and bein' down wit da administration. After all, Elvis' career only soared to greater heights after he joined the Army, right? Right?

Er, right. Whatever you say. What would I know - the guy who was actually a rocker, the guy who can still play guitar better than you can - well, write, for one thing? I know when I'm beat.

The clairvoyance continues:

Face it: the right's ferglibbety gee over this is spurred not by ideological differences but by adolescent jealousy.

He's onto me.

I sit up at night, staring at the list I keep on the whiteboard in my basement: on the top, it's labelled "Rockers On My Side. The whiteboard is blank.

And I'll stare at that list, draining bottle after bottle of (yuppie microbrew) beer, the muscles in my jaw tightening, eyes stinging from the rebuke the world's given me. I'll stand, unsteadily, and stagger out the back door, in a cold sweat, the bile forcing its way up the gorge, and fall to my knees in the backyard, throwing my arms wide, bellowing in wordless rage and pain at the betrayal. Artists...betray...me..., and then the coma releases me, if only fitfully, from the brain-fever.

In the morning I wake, head lying on a vomit-soaked rag, my head pounding like the inside of Perry Ferrell's duodenum, the Dead Kennedys playing even though there's no CD player anywhere near. And yet there's no release; the jealousy is still there.

Jealousy. It's a terrible thing.

"You're in over your head here, pal.

In over my head?

AKBAR: "Comrade, Allah be praised - send in Guido the Infidel"

GUIDO: "You called?"

AKBAR: "Yes. This Berg character - his criticisms of artists' politics are getting too close to...the truth. The Russians, the Trilaterals and Soros are getting nervous. You know what do do...

GUIDO: "He won't get away this time. He's in way over his head".

That kind of "over my head?"

Or is this, like "buttcrack", some level of epistemology that eludes me?

Best go back to nit-picking Nick Coleman articles. Nice use of the thesaurus though; you don't come across phrases like palliative chimera everyday.

No, I don't imagine you do.

My point? Well, there are several:

• Art and politics mix
• Fortunately, they mix any way I, the viewer/listener, want them to.
• I apologize to Mark Gisleson. He is no longer the most depressing blog in town.

That is all.

Posted by Mitch at October 8, 2004 06:43 AM | TrackBack