Skynyrd

Nathan Newman nathan.newman at yale.edu
Wed Nov 17 20:38:59 PST 1999



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Jeffrey St. Clair
> In this case, the misinterpretors were a bunch of well-educated,
> reactionary liberals who got off on hearing themselves denounce a band
they
> knew nothing about. Hell, all they had to do was listen to Skynyrd's The
> Ballad of Curtis Loew to tell where they were coming from--if they really
wanted
> to know, which, of course, they didn't.
>
> And you're going to blame Bruce for Reagan and Buchanan coopting
> Born In the USA? Damn, I'll kiss his feet for writing that song and
producing
> the spectacle of it being taken up as an anthem by the likes of Reagan and
Pat
> B.

Still too easy. I love both Sweet Home Alabama and Born in the USA, but to argue that art is always properly interpreted seems way too postmodernist for my tastes. I'm not a socialist realist in my artistic tastes, but I sometimes think the arguments for it politically are far stronger than the "resistance" intepretations that defend a lot of bourgois music and art.

Art is often an unguided missile and as someone who watched a lot of rich frat boys raising their fists while signing "Born in the USA", I often think the joke was more on Bruce than on Reagan.

-- Nathan Newman



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