I have to admit, I feel a bit sorry for Ryan about this. It would have depressed me if in the 90’s Kurt Cobain publicly and explicitly called me a dick.
Probably his statement that Americans cling to guns and religion.
That constitutes a WAR?!?! Really?!
eta: setting aside the fact that the statement is taken out of context and in no way was anti- guns OR religion…
Put me down as another Gen Xer who listens to music that I probably don’t agree with if I actually checked out the lyrics.
I did flash back to this exchange on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me with a Republican Congressman:
Well, Obama has spent a lot of energy going after religious fundamentalists like this guy…
And, I may be far too cynical here, but I think this does say something about Ryan – he clearly doesn’t really think that the words to the songs really matter, that what RATM is saying is anything heartfelt or sincere, as if what people say is just a convenient pose that has no real meaning.
Post snipped.
Just a data point. I am a musician and a music fan and I have watched a total of about 5 music videos in the last year. That is being generous. I imagine that is about a normal number for a lot of people. The videos I have seen have usually been emailed to me because someone liked them.
I can fully believe that you can be a fan and not seen any of a bands videos, especially if you happen to be busy. I imagine that Ryan does not spend a lot of time hanging on the couch with a beer in his hand watching MTV.
Slee
I’ve probably watched even fewer new videos this year myself. I haven’t seen the article where Ryan actually described his fan status, so if he rattled off a dozen bands he has on his iPod, fine. But if he is in fact a fan of a band that peaked in the late 90s and early 2000s I think he would have known their politics. That video is a data point of where RATM lies on the spectrum. Really, it’s the proverbial 2’x4’ if you thought the band were just some bros kicking out jams about beer and watching chicks.
There’s plenty of evidence of what RATM are about to even a causual fan. Given the relative caution and minefield that conservative politicians have to navigate to maintain some credibility in their position in popular culture, it strikes me as tone deaf, or that Ryan isn’t as thoughtful as he’s made out to be. Especially considering that he outed himself; nobody caught him at Tower Records slipping a copy of Evil Empire into his jacket.
Wait… are you saying Ryan is a shoplifter? :eek: Like, a kleptomaniac? 
Do we really want a klepto one heart attack away from the oval office, America? 
If he wanted to go after the younger demographic he should have picked a band that is popular with the younger demographic.
I’ve heard him talk talk extensively about songs deep in the catalog. He has been to dozens and dozens of shows from long before he was governor. He is a genuine fan. As most logical people would say, he states that he is a fan of Bruce as an artist but does not agree with a lot of his politics. I can assure you, being a Bruce fan is not a requirement in NJ politics. It only came up as an issue with him because he is such a rabid fan.
Younger than the average GOP voter, that is.
Yes, you are correct. I felt that was the best way to express my view of the utter assinity of the idea that you have to agree with a band’s politics to enjoy their music. Especially RATM, since their lyrics are mostly indecipherable, “They rally around the family, with a pocket full of shells” may be a cogent expression of a poltical viewpoint to some, but to me it is just as meaningful as the lyrics to “A horse with no name”
The idea that we should pick musical acts based on their politics makes as much sense as piciking a restaurant based on which football team the chef likes. It is vaguely Leninesque.
So you picked Obama singing a song by a guy who’s apolitical, and claiming that Obama is against monogamy? 
Discussed and dismissed - no one is saying that folks can’t like whomever they want; it is the *optics *of how it appears - and it could be seen as poor political craft. Stratocaster, upthread, states that it is extremely unlikely that anyone will give a rat’s ass about this when they vote, and it is being overblown, so it is *not *poor political craft - okay, cool, YMMV. If you want to get behind that POV, cool; your call. But arguing that anyone is telling Ryan who he can like is a non-starter; no one is doing that.
But thanks for your wonderful parody.
Ok then if it was calculated to cultivate younger than the average GOP voter he should have picked a popular band.
That’s a solid piece of lyrics right there. The critique of the right wing values lobby is obvious. The line itself suggests a nursery rhyme, “ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies,” commonly (if wrongly) understood to be a reference to the bubonic plague. Shells, standing in for money, are empty. So in one line there is a plainspoken critique of the moral majority that evokes its infectiousness and sterility at the same time. This is anything but undecipherable.
You’re one o’ them coastal academic types, aren’t you? A fine exegesis, sir.
There is no article where he “describes his fan status”. There is no quote from Ryan. We don’t know who the source of this information was. We don’t know when this information was found.
There is no “outing”, no secret message or any evidence of him trying to curry favor because of this. I linked to the original article on the 2nd page of this thread and pointed out that HuffPo erred in their characterization of RATM being his “favorite band”. Here it is again:
That’s it. That’s all there is.
Now, if you want to go all Talmudic Scholar on that one sentence, which is part of very long article btw, you’re certainly free to do so. But let’s keep in mind what the actual source material is.
Tom Morello never told Paul Ryan to stop listening to his music.. Rush and Silversun pickups simply told Rand Paul and Mitt Romney to stop playing their music at their rallies. Tom Petty has had to do the same thing. Sucks to be you.. but the artist does have a right to request that their music not be used at partisan political rallies.
So go play some crappy ass Ted Nugent.. I always said.. if it came down to it.. Jimi dying is still better than being Nugent..
I will say what I said upthread: that’s enough. He counts RAtM among his favorite bands. So this has been something he has discussed - either with the reporter for the NY Times or at something prior that the NY Times could source.
If he wanted to, he could easily have denied it with a terse written statement or something that modified and reduced the point - “I have a lot of metal on a mix I used for working out - I didn’t give it much thought.”
Either way, it was used to score points against him for a couple of news cycles - could be no big deal, or it could be part of other nitpicky points that get made to paint a portrait of this newly-national candidate that questions his judgment…
Guilty as charged. I also wanted to see if I could do it without using the word “hermeneutic.” I don’t even listen to RATM, and that was the first time I have come across the lyrics.
I think your broader point is right and, for instance, astorian is wrong. I listen to a lot of early polyphonic music. In its time, it was massively controversial. Bruce Holsinger has a really good book about this, called Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture. In its time, opinion-makers thought new musical currents were fleshy, voluptuous, homosexual, and utterly deviant. I think the phrase Holsinger uses is “musicality of sodomy.”
No one who listens to it today could possibly hear that message. It has to be reconstructed by a serious scholar. I’m a coastal, atheist type who has no problem listening to very Christian music because the argument is long gone. Only the aesthetics are left, and I like them. Most people could say the same for the Sistine Chapel (full of political arguments that typical viewers know nothing about) or the Pieta.
But you don’t get to say that about Rage Against the Machine. The arguments are still very current and despite puddleglum’s bafflement, they are well-understood. Like it or not, liking them is a political decision. Even if you like them in spite of their politics, you still have to like them in spite of your politics. It takes some kind of conscious decision. Either you think they are stupendous musicians or your politics are only skin deep.
It is entirely possible that Ryan thinks their musical qualities overcome their political ones. I am reasonably left-wing, but as much as I love The Dead Kennedys and Operation Ivy, their politics are to the left of Jesus. But part of me likes them because they come right out and say shit I can barely come to terms with. Maybe Ryan thinks they are rock gods; maybe he is just pandering. Who knows? But you are absolutely right that raising these kinds of questions unnecessarily might be an unforced error for a politician seeking national office.