Oops!

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, a book by a University of Chicago professor that turned out to be a sort of opening salvo in what some folks call "the culture wars" between social conservatives and liberals. Bloom's arena was less some of the political matters brought under that banner than the world of academia where he served.

The young Friar was only partially impressed with Bloom's book, read about a year after college graduation. The discussion of goofball professors and silly political correctness stemming from a paralyzing relativism made sense to him, barely a year removed from some prime examples of the same. The section trashing most of modern music, including Top 40, rock and most other things that he listened to, got his righteous dudgeon up. Just another silly old poot trashing stuff he doesn't like because it's too loud.

Bloom's point was that popular music sold rebellion and license while actually being the vehicle for commercial manipulation by the same kinds of people the musicians were supposed to be standing against. Rage Against the Machine can rail against fatcat capitalists all it wants to, for example, but every CD sold makes money for the major corporation that owns its record label and the people who own stock in it (Rage, of course, hit big after Bloom's book came out. He uses Mick Jagger as his example, but it's kind of hard to remember when Mick Jagger's image was countercultural).

And the problem goes along a ways more because not only is the young pop music lover being sold artificial rebellion, the actual content of the music produced for him is empty, devoid of real passion, thought or emotion beyond the basic animal level.

The young Friar thought that Bloom overlooked a number of musical acts that seemed to him to counter Bloom's thesis -- punk rock in its original mid 1970s form, independent and unique bands like pre-1985 R.E.M. and so on. Those artists may later have "sold out" to commercial interests, but they were originally more that just poseurs.

Today, I agree with Bloom's point about the artificial creation that's supposed to be rock and roll rebellion. Just abou every sullen sideways stare from over the collar of a battered leather jacket is, in reality, an entry on someone's profit spreadsheet. But I was still holding out against the idea that the majority of today's music was simply empty sexual suggestion.

Then my radio played this pile of vacuous by Usher:

I see you over there so hypnotic,Thinkin' 'bout what I'd do to that body,I'll getchu like ooh baby baby, ooh baby babyA-ooh baby baby, ooh baby babyGot no drink in my hand, but I'm wastedGettin' drunk off the thought of you nakedI'll getchu like ooh baby baby, ooh baby babyA-ooh baby baby, ooh baby babyAnd I've tried to fight it, to fight itBut you're so magnetic, magneticGot one life, just live it, just live itNow relax and get on your back
If you wanna scream yeah,Let me know and I'll take you thereGet you going like a-ooh baby baby, ooh baby babyA-ooh baby baby, ooh baby baby

Sorry, Dr. Bloom. You might have been on to something after all.