Culture Vultures
Steyn, Mark
CULTURE VULTURES by Mark Steyn Hooked on Propane F rom my vantage point in the Granite State, I usually pay little heed to the activities of Massachusetts Republicans, who tend to be well to the...
...Absolutely...
...But he's not so out of it that he hasn't cannily bought up a diversified portfolio of nest eggs to compensate for the more erratic sales of his post-Beatles work: he owns the Buddy Holly catalogue, the scores to Annie and Guys and Dolls, and even "Happy Birthday to You," written by two sisters in 1883 but, thanks to a court judgment in the 1936s, still in copyright...
...it's because she's the daughter of Sir Paul McCartney...
...D oes it work...
...Nobacon describes himself as a pop anarchist and wanted to distinguish himself from the creepier practitioners of his art still sucking up to Blair at Downing Street receptions...
...The couturier responded with his customary eloquence: "F---ing plank...
...Or be renowned for your eulogy to Jerry Garcia and unable even to land a gig as ambassador to Mexico...
...Indeed, he has appointed an official Cool Britannia committee of celebrities to co-ordinate government "cool policy," a committee which was, as inevitably as night follows day, immediately denounced as being full of a lot of clapped-out old has-beens who aren't cool at all...
...McQueen's f---ing success is f---ing great for f---ing McQueen, but what's it f---ing got to do with the f—ing government...
...b) "Two Little Boys," a turn-of-the-century children's song that Rolf ("Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport") Harris revived with great success in 1970...
...The governor likes ...showtunes...
...Quite right...
...Between now and November 2000, Gore is keen to show that he's king of his own wild frontier, out there on the edge, the kind of fellow who eschews "Ozzie and Harriet" because there aren't enough lesbians in it...
...He made me move out the bloody way...
...They can handle bad economic figures, tax increases, and oral-sex scandals, but even the spin doctors can't spin this one...
...Blair sent along his deputy prime minister, John Prescott...
...42 June 1998 • The American Spectator himself having publicly to apologize to Jools Holland of the old new-wave band Squeeze for committing a ghastly error in placement and accidentally seating him next to a bass player...
...Cellucci's predecessor was not only a Jerry Garcia fan but also an admirer of the Violent Femmes (this is apparently a rock band and not Weld's core pro-choice constituency...
...At the state Republican convention, he entered to the strains of the cutting-edge Dave Matthews Band's hot number "Ants Marching...
...I couldn't figure out why they were saying 'Propane,"' he said...
...Hail Cellucci...
...Since his ascension a year ago, the world's grooviest prime minister has been assiduously rebranding his country as "Cool Britannia...
...Would you rather listen to Rolf Harris and be a three-term prime minister...
...44 The American Spectator • June 1998 43...
...So, when Tony Blair invites Oasis to io Downing Street and Paul Cellucci attends the Clapton gig, it's only one elite reaching out to another elite...
...He may be perfectly acceptable as an acting governor, but he's no rockin' William Weld...
...as his campaign song...
...I like to think I'm being admirably bipartisan here...
...Thatcher's taste in music was always being sneered at by sophisticates...
...Compared with all the other ninnies, Prescott is a big, bluff, working-class northerner, Old Labour, salt of the earth, etc...
...Miss McCartney is a young fashion designer, but it's doubtful whether that's the real reason for her presence...
...Of course, as Gore discovered, it's a fine line between being cool and being stiff, in the freezer with hypothermia in an ice-fishing hut north of sixty...
...On the other hand, the new Cool Britannia is...well, pretty much the same, come to think of it...
...Let's forget about rock as a radical revolutionary force...
...Sorry, I'm having tea with Princess Margaret tomorrow...
...the question is whether Cellucci Republicans bellowing along to "Cocaine" fall into the same category...
...Genuine revolutionary forces dig easy listening: Mrs...
...As Sir Paul McCartney himself once sang, "You say you want a revolution...
...By a cruel twist, Prescott now finds his fate yoked to the modish preoccupations of the bloody Beautifuls...
...Thus, Sir Paul, from his lofty eminence as a Knight of the Realm, calls for the legalization of marijuana...
...Every time it's sung in a movie, on TV, in old news clips of Marilyn serenading JFK, Sir Paul gets a check in the mail...
...In other words, in the America of William Jefferson Airplane Clinton, is a square guy fit for public office...
...Is this the guy to lead the GOP (Groovin' Old Popsters) into the next millennium...
...As for being cool, the lessons of Tony Blair's Britain are a cautionary tale for politicians who succumb too easily to the Violent Femmes...
...Still, as Blair told Time magazine, "When I see pageantry in Britain, I think that's great, but it doesn't define what Britain is today...
...Is there a lesson for Cellucci here...
...McCartney: she was Lady McCartney...
...He didn't get me there, the f---er...
...And, anyway, how come that forty years of rock'n'roll have failed to produce a single decent song about domestic heating fuels...
...and (c) anything by Andy Williams...
...But in the dying days of Conservative rule, at the behest of his spin doctors, he embraced the new, praising the innovative brio of young British artists and designers like Alexander McQueen...
...At first, the new boy looked set to continue Weld's Rockachusetts strategy...
...In my experience, rock stars are far more hung up on form and precedence than any dowager duchess or second son of an earl...
...said Prescott...
...But I was struck by the plight of the Bay State's acting governor, Paul Cellucci...
...Whether this is a credible position for anyone other than a billionaire rock star is a moot point, but you begin to see why Bay State GOP types don't want their man to come over like Mister Squaresville...
...With a candor that's a disgrace to his profession, Cellucci's shell-shocked campaign manager Rob Gray conceded: "He just has bad musical tastes...
...He seems to have brought the rock community to its senses...
...he said...
...The old, discredited Rule Britannia was remote, elitist, snobbish, irrelevant to people's lives...
...We can all agree that Roosevelt New Dealers singing along with "Happy Days Are Here Again" are harmless enough...
...As Chastity Bono observed just before ABC canceled the show, "Ellen" was too gay even for her...
...Not knowing the words to "Cocaine," not recognizing the Dave Matthews Band, not having a clue who the Violent Femmes are, these are the signs of a free spirit in today's homogenized culture...
...It seems that, if only when it comes to rock'n'roll royalty, Tony Blair believes in the hereditary principle after all...
...Her favorite records were: (a) "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window...
...The Beautifuls" was Prescott's shorthand for Blair and Gordon Brown (now the chancellor of the exchequer), supposedly the photogenic end of the party...
...Incidentally, I'm appalled that American reports on the death of Linda McCartney should have persisted in referring to her as Mrs...
...But a revolution of a sort, all the more effective for being slyly insidious, has occurred...
...Besides, American politics has been couched in a pop vernacular for most of this century—since at least Woodrow Wilson's first shot at the presidency, when Ballard MacDonald, Tin Pan Alley author of "Somebody Loves Me" and "(Back Home Again in) Indiana," wrote "Wilson, That's All...
...The paper has now dubbed him "terminally unhip" and printed a photograph of the goofball Gov in the satin tunic and plumed hat of his high school marching band...
...One of the reasons he made his speech in praise of the lesbian sitcom "Ellen" was that, ever since Tipper launched her campaign against rock lyrics, he's been saddled with this appallingly unjustified image as an uptight white-bread stuffed-shirt Boy Scout whose record collection came to an end with "The Ballad of Davy Crockett...
...CULTURE VULTURES by Mark Steyn Hooked on Propane F rom my vantage point in the Granite State, I usually pay little heed to the activities of Massachusetts Republicans, who tend to be well to the left of the New Hampshire Republican Party, the New Hampshire Democratic Party, the New Hampshire Marxist-Leninist Provisional Revolutionary Front, and pretty well everyone else up here...
...Last year, after a grand banquet at his stately home, Sting found New pressure on GOP pols to turn on and tune in...
...At next year's state convention, the massed ranks of Massachusetts Republicans should greet Cellucci with a rousing chorus of "Propane...
...So what's it to be...
...by the Beverly Sisters (a British version of the Lennon Sisters, only more so...
...Hugh Hudson, director of Chariots of Fire, had shown up early in the campaign to film a shadow cabinet meeting for use in an election broadcast...
...As the Boston Herald cruelly riposted: "Duh, Governor, that's 'Cocaine,' Clap-ton's legendary song about drug abuse...
...F--k him...
...It goes: Two Little Boys Had two little toys Each had a wooden horse Gaily they'd play Each summer's day Warriors both, of course One little chap Then had a mishap...
...Danbert Nobacon— ne the rather more bourgeoisappellated Nigel Hunter—poured a bucket of water over the deputy prime minister...
...But you can't help noticing that among the members of Blair's celebrity panel is Stella McCartney...
...In the more confident days of his premiership, John Major waxed nostalgic about the England he loved—the "long shadows on county grounds" (cricket), "warm beer" not ice-cold Continental lager, and "old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the early morning mist...
...MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...
...McCartney or (more often) Ms...
...How bad...
...I doubt very much whether Prescott enjoyed a single note of the caterwauling he had to endure at the Brit Awards...
...Al Gore is facing exactly the same dilemma...
...Even worse, he was assaulted by a member of the pop group Chumbawamba...
...These Jurassic rockers—the Clappers and Bowies, the Beatles and Stones —now symbolize the spirit of the age in a way they never did thirty years ago...
...Alas, whatever advantage he might have gained by this was thrown away when he then told stunned staffers that he'd...never heard of the song...
...So f---ing typical of government...
...I said, `But I always sit 'ere!' He said, 'Get lost,' and moved the bloody Beautifuls into the middle of the table...
...He has a point...
...Like Massachusetts Republicans, the Jurassic rockers want low taxes and economic growth, but they're relaxed about pot and sex and gays and like to feel good aboutthemselves on environmental issues...
...Labour is proving especially obtuse at waking up to this fact, though this year's Brit Awards— Britain's equivalent of the Grammies—came as a blow...
...one by one—except for the lonely, marginalized lead singer of Simply Red—they've abandoned Blair and denounced his government as a pack of useless poseurs...
...A couple of days after Labour's 1992 election defeat, I found myself at a breakfast with Prescott, where he was scathing about the party's Blairite tendency...
...With aides still reeling from this shock, it then emerged that Cellucci had made an even bigger gaffe while attending ex officio the Eric Clapton gig, one of the key ceremonial duties of a modern governor...
...Not necessarily...
...Cellucci had been puzzled at the way everyone else was chanting along with one of the songs...
...When, say, Bill Weld describes himself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal, what else is that but the traditional position of the sixties pop star...
...For example, the Labour government is officially committed to abolishing the right of hereditary peers—lords, dukes, and so forth—to sit in Parliament...
Vol. 31 • June 1998 • No. 6
