The Entertainment Industry: Marxist Tool

Over at Hugh Hewitt's site, once and future Soxblogger Dean Barnett riffs on the politics of John Mellencamp, a troubador he admires as an artist. Unfortunately, that's also meant enduring Mellencamp's idiotic, adolescent politics over the years:

I WISH I COULD SAY I was surprised when I saw Mellencamp’s now-notorious interview with Charlie Rose where Mellencamp said that we shouldn’t have responded militarily to Osama bin Laden after 9/11. For good measure, he added that we shouldn’t have responded militarily to Japan after Pear Harbor, either.

Directly after, Dean has a real epiphany, one we've been trying to point out here at HazZzMat since our founding over a year ago:

This interview was typical of Mellencamp’s politics – ignorant, idiotic and childishly contrarian. Of course, there was also the irritating grace note of moral superiority. Mellencamp wants peace, everyone else wants war. Therefore, Mellencamp is the superior being, the enlightened artist.

Dean nails it right here, vividly describing what one can charitably describe as Mellencamp's political world view—which, as any sentient being should understand is less a matter of politics than it is propaganda and moral posturing. Not to mention a desire to be admired by the leftists who dominate the entertainment industry, an important point that Dean gets to rather quickly by describing the "irritating grace note of moral superiority" and the preening smugness that goes along with being a "superior being, the enlightened artist." There is, of course, no enlightenment here, only the adolescent narcissism that is today a pre-requisite for success in the entertainment business not to mention the arts and academia.

The reality, of course, is that Mellencamp is, politically speaking, not only uninformed but stupid, which I'm using here in its original descriptive sense. The kind of party-line blathering you get out of these entertainment types is the same Gramscian script everyone else in that business is repeating. There's no superiority here at all. Only a mindless conformism, masquerading as intellectual courage. Frankly, sucking up to the prevailing point of one's peer group involves cowardice rather than courage. But in the ephemeral world of rich entertainers, that's a detail they can easily overlook.

Dean contrasts Mellencamp's willingness to bloviate on a topic with which he has little acquiaintance or expertise with the knowledge of his own natural limitations:

He’s blissfully ignorant that he’s about to become the poster-child for sub-moronic entertainment-community politics.

Speaking of blissful ignorance, you have to wonder what goes through a guy like Mellencamp’s mind when he’s asked to talk politics for 30 minutes on national television. If someone asked me to spend 30 minutes on TV discussing particle physics, I would respectfully decline. I don’t know a blessed thing about particle physics, and I wouldn’t want to take the chance of being exposed for the ignoramus that I am. And yet Mellencamp, a man so ignorant that he didn’t seem entirely familiar with Pearl Harbor, willfully walked into Charlie Rose’s den. Unbelievable.

We follow Dean up to the "unbelievable." Believe it, Dean. This is precisely the problem with today's entertainers who think that their massive wealth entitles them to be listened to on topics ranging from brain surgery to international politics.

Rarely has such breathtaking ignorance been in evidence on such a massive scale. America's richest entertainers, among the wealthiest individuals on this planet, have become a significant 5th column presence in this country even as they flaunt its traditions with their penchant for serial relationships and tawdry displays of money and conspicuous consumption.

Dean eventually sidles up to a solution that was briefly employed against the Dixie Chicks (but then gradually forgotten) and should be employed against all these clowns. Cut off the feedbag:

In the future, I’m going to be a lot more reluctant to financially support artists who likely consider me a neocon warmonger. Given how annoying Mellencamp’s ubiquitous Chevy commercial is, not purchasing Mellencamp’s new album will probably be a painless first step.

That's right. It's time for this country's real working stiffs (not faux unionists like the despicable Bruce Springsteen) to stand up and be counted. Forget smarmy clowns like Mellencamp (once pretentiously billed as John "Cougar" Mellencamp) and Springsteen. Boycott 'em. Save your money and buy an inflation-indexed savings bond. At least you'll get a return on your dollar. Instead of having to wipe a foul gob of entertainment-land spit off your face.

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