Thursday, January 05, 2017

The Inauguration

According to Esquire the Trump Inauguration has lined up the Rockettes (some of them), the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (some of them) and the 16 year old winner of a TV talent show to perform.

This is proof of my argument that the rightwing has no culture of its own. It tries to steal from classical culture, which was mostly aristocratic, and from contemporary popular culture, which is hard to describe, but is mostly made by people who are not rightwing: black people, gay people, members of other minorities and so on. It mostly fails. As I said once in a poem:
You've taken all our money,
And you've taken all our time,
Working in the Wal-Mart
Or working in a mine,

But you don't get Johnny Cash,
And you don't get ol' Merle.
You don't get Bruce Springsteen.
You don't get Steve Earle.

Make your own damn art and music.
Make your own hopes and dreams,
Sitting in your counting house
With your money making schemes.

Make a choir of bosses singing
"Greed" and "war" in tune.
Put on your white shoes
And dance with Pat Boone
Along the rising ocean,
Under a waning moon.
I once asked my father, a distinguished art historian, why official art/salon art became so awful after the French Revolution. My father said, "The bourgeoisie have no taste."