Matt, I like Rage Against The Machine, too. These debates over whether and to what extent, rock and roll (by conscious lefties or apolitical rockers) is "counter-hegemonic" or not have been around and around for a long time,witness Simon Frith, Greil Marcus, David Laing, Lawrence Grossberg, even icky neo-con Martha Bayles said some useful things in her book excoriating punks and their precursors like the Velvet Underground for "spoiling" r n' r, for boomers.(also, cf. Plato on youth and music shaking the foundations...)
I weigh in more on the Frankfurter "culture industry" thesis side but, look for signs of hope whereever I can find 'em too, esp. among those youngsters half my age, that would likely find finding Monthly Review like I did, and I'm sure most of the list did, a quaint oddity. Sometime ago in another post on RATM, I mentioned the liner notes to the previous album, and admired the breadth and intelligence that went into choosing the books, mags, orgs and websites that they put into it. And as this ex-catholic remembers from the the Biblical cliche (is it really in the Bible?), the Lord works in mysterious ways. Well, this puppy, has enuf Freud, and even some of those supposed irrationalist pomos uinder his addled belt and brain to say that maybe counter-hegemony works in mysterious ways too. (All that only to say that forming political attitudes, has only so much to do with rational, intellectual cognition, argumentation. As Johnny Rotten says in a Public Image, Ltd.song, "Anger Is An Energy!" (Cf. article by Peter Lyman in Socialist Review, "The Politics Of Anger, " circa early 80's. Lyman also had article on Freud's Dora case study there. His mate, sorry can't remember her name, she is the Barbara Streisand Professor of ? at Univ. of Southern Ca. has some good stuff on gender socialization.)
Michael Pugliese P.S. Chomsky on Lehrer News Hour? Think the "Manufacturing Consent" Canadian documentary folks asked him that specifically. Think he was on once. And Jim Lehrer in response to media watchdog group FAIR, said that the News Hour was meant to be open to mainstream ruling class (I'm putting my words in his resonse into leftspeak- calling Seth Ackerman from FAIR!!! for accurate cite) think tankers and policy makers to hash out consensus and police the parameters of acceptable discourse/policy options. I do remember Jim Lehrer's final riposte, it was , "What have Michael Harrington on all the time!"