Dear Friends,
I have mentioned before the sad state of affairs that the thing that really generates attention these days—clicks, subscriptions, shares, etc.—is always a negative attack on somebody or something. I get three or more times the engagement on something that outrages. I sort of predicted in my review of Oliver Anthony’s song that I would get a lot of vitriol. It turns out that a lot of folks were more than eager to prove me right.
And that’s fine. People are just as entitled to strong views on art as I am. I wish more had actually responded by defending the actual art in question instead of all the “vibes” they were projecting into said art, and I wish more had resisted the immediate resort to the ad hominem. We were all quite amused around here to find out that I am “elite,” “privileged,” “rich,” and “jealous.” We had some good laughs.
On reflection, I do think that I ought to have resisted to a much greater degree the drift into the personal—that is, I should have endeavored to separate the man from the song. I am not sure it was really possible, but I ought to have made a better effort. My critique had little to do with Oliver Anthony, the person, but that isn’t really discernible from the review. Some of my critiques were snarky, the appropriateness of which is debatable; but some were also mean, the inappropriateness of which isn’t debatable. And for that I am sorry. I really did mean it when I wished him success.
My own ire—and maybe this wasn’t even entirely clear to me until later—wasn’t about him at all. It was about the massive, instant, unquestioning hype on the part of huge portions of the political right insisting that this man is some kind of conservative (even godly) hero for this song. And—this is the key part—that if you didn’t agree you were one of “them,” the “establishment,” the “elite,” the “Left,” the “oppressors.” He was made a tribal totem to discriminate between good guys and bad. In that sense, it was déjà vu of 2016, when I was told the exact same thing about Donald Trump. It is the same vibe, for the same reasons. There are so many sociological factors in play here it is difficult to sort them out—Jonah Goldberg suggests this is another instance of the right just craving a celebrity, and I think there’s something to that. Regardless, when tribalism tries to make me celebrate really poor art—much like it does with really poor Presidential candidates—I’m not going along and I don’t care if it “fights” or “hits back” or “gives voice to the forgotten" or whatever populist slogan gets attached to it. When a progressive holds up four fingers and tells me to say it’s five, the answer is no; when a conservative makes me listen to that song and tells me to agree or to say that it’s great, the answer is also no.
I didn’t find the song remotely worthy of the adulation, much less the intense—in some cases overtly religious—devotion to its message, and insofar as my critique is about the song instead of the man, I completely stand by it. Bitterness, resentment, and grievance are such debilitating and dehumanizing things; they have been and continue to be destructive of the conservative movement, our country, as well as legions of actual flesh-and-blood people. I will continue to push back against the all-consuming notions of class warfare and perpetual victimhood.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Square Inch to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.