PUBLIC NUISANCES: Message to Tony Blair/Dead Rock
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. s TYRRELL, JR. Message to Tony Blair WASHINGTON HE ECONOMIST, BRITAIN'S VENERABLE WEEKLY news magazine, has called on Prime Minister Tony Blair to resign. The magazine's...
...Blair recognized Milosevic for the butcher that he was...
...I think Democrats ought to give this a little thought...
...He was the first columnist to predict the 1994 takeover of Capitol Hill by the Republicans...
...In the Labour Party, a party not known for its ardor to defend the West against such barbarous forces as the Nazis and the Communists, he stood out, took chances, and directed his party and his country to defend the West...
...Then off to their prayer rugs the pious Zarqawi and bin Laden will go, never to lose their tempers again...
...He puts principle before party...
...The primary reason is politics-and not any kind of politics but rather conservative politics...
...Not even M Gore's opulently endowed television network shows promise...
...Hence we hear more and more Rush wannabes...
...Blair to finish his premiership and resign only after he has handed authority over to a functioning Iraqi government with the Iraqi military pacifying its country...
...I never would have thought a Labour leader could do so much for Britain and the West...
...Now let him explain the death of Rock and Roll...
...But at some point liberal talk show hosts lost the audience, probably about the time liberalism began to lose out wherever the citizenry's vote mattered...
...And if he does, who will take over as prime minister, Neville Chamberlain...
...In this case the principle is defending civilized values against barbarism...
...But then, as I say, we have the rising Mark Levin and doubtless there will be others...
...He summoned the forces worldwide to repel the brutes and he is succeeding...
...In fact, the Economist's political position is right of center, though it is very fastidious about the positions it takes...
...So m e say Mr Am e ri ca stagg e rs because A1 Franken is not funny...
...Dead Rock WASHINGTON ~~~176 HOSE GRUESOME NEWS REPORTS from the Rock I and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony the other...
...Barone says no...
...I can recall the late 1960s and the 1970s when talk radio was a very different land from what it is today...
...It seems to be part of a counterattack by the leaders of the Coalition of the Willing against the defeatists...
...Or do you think that Abu Musab alZarqawi and Osama bin Laden will be satisfied once we all live as good Moslems...
...Besides, Rock and Roll has not come up with a worthwhile song in at least a decade...
...President George W. Bush is sounding similar notes in public appearances...
...Over on this side of the Atlantic The American Spectator calls on Mr...
...Some are dreadful, vacuous, only dimly conservative shouters...
...The man who with the Coalition ofthe Willing is whipping the New Nazis, the Islamofascists, in two countries is prevailed upon by some ofhis fellow citizens to give up his post before the job is done...
...I still have my disagreements with him, but he has amazed me...
...Think of it...
...The wave toward conservatism still seems to be gaining strength even as the wave for liberalism evanesces...
...Now forces in his country are scheming to remove him from the stage...
...Most talk radio hosts were decidedly left...
...I have no doubt that they are popular because America is an increasingly conservative country and because conservative Americans are not welcomed by mainstream media with the exception of Fox...
...The ritualistic leftists in his Labour Party have been putting pressure on him to resign, the sooner the better...
...He modernized it and kept Britain competitive in the modern market economy...
...Actually the appeasers are the norm among politicians...
...The Democrats see themselves duplicating that feat this fall...
...The magazine's political leaning in the UK is to the right of the newsweeklies in the United States...
...Well, let the Economist, stand with the defeatists...
...In their warbles they lectured ordinary Americans on what to eat, what to wear, even prayer...
...This brave and farsighted man who told all Europe that the enemy was coming is asked to resign even though the enemy has struck and he has been vindicated...
...So Rock and Roll, rest in peace...
...As the editor in chief of The American Spectator I call upon Mr...
...The votes are just not there...
...An astonishingly high percentage of them then found themselves under arrest for random violence or ingesting substances that were decidedly unhealthy...
...Mmost nowhere can they start up a successful media alternative to Rush and the gang...
...Radio is a medium peculiarly suited for music, but there is apparently not much of an audience left for Rock and Roll...
...Their arguments are very appealing if one can banish from mind the ghastly brutality of the Islamofascist brutes who kill defenseless citizens first in their war to impose nihilism on the world...
...The declining audience for music on radio, however, is a secondary reason for the rise ofthe conservative talker...
...Frankly, I admire Blair as one of the rarest of politicians...
...But it is more than that...
...night remind me of a conclusion I came to a few years back...
...That would be in the early 1980s with the rise of Ronald Reagan...
...The frightful suffering of the left's Mr Am e ri ca is we 11 kn own...
...Reading it is somewhat like reading the official voice of the Vatican, though with none of the puckish humor of L'Osservatore Romano...
...It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction...
...Happily the replacement for these left-wing nihilists on radio has been the right-wing talker...
...Michael Barone recently gave an analysis of this condition that bodes drearily for Democratic politics...
...Blair has said that he intends to resign before the next British election...
...Through the years the peace ofthe grave has crept up on a lot ofrockers, usuallyyears before they arrived at the average life expectancy of almost any type of adult human being, including skydivers and inebriated jaywalkers...
...The Blairs and the Churchills are the anomaly...
...Blair is the kind of leader Britain's Tory party should have produced...
...At any rate, I read the Economist regularly and enjoy it, but calling on Blair to resign strikes me as a publicity stunt, except that the editors of the Economist see themselves as above such opportunism, much as the Pope sees himself as above such opportunism...
...Today, those who have read about the brave handful of Europeans who in the 1930s defied appeasement and Nazism think of the appeasers as the anomaly...
...Given how preachy the average rocker became by the late 1960s, this is ironic...
...I mean, how many decades can we listen to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and other rockers from Rock's better days...
...A conservative, for instance, the venerable Bob Grant, was rare...
...Rush Limbaugh-the master of the genre-Mark Levin, the rising oracle of the genre, and of course the engaging John Batchelor are total opposites from any warbler ever featured in Rolling Stone magazine and all three are probably better singers...
...Now the fastidious right has moved in to increase the pressure on Blair...
...Country and Western's audience is not replacing Rock and Roll, and classical music's audience seems to be in decline...
...He did not use my radio evidence to foretell a bad day at the polls in the year's off year election...
...Yet there is another reason...
...They lectured us on the value of the great outdoors and of world peace...
...He looked at voter trends, vulnerable congressional seats, and other traditional evidence to predict this fall's elections...
...Blair to stay at Number 10 and finish the job...
...Rock and Roll is dead...
...Their rhetorical offensive is just another war story the press has missed...
...They get tiresome, and apparently there is just not a large enough audience opening for earlier musical styles, for instance, big band or swing, jazz, or folk music...
...Rock and Roll is dead...
...He was staunch in removing the Taliban from Afghanistan, and he did not flinch in staring down Saddam...
...He showed his mettle on Kosovo when the majority of Europeans again ducked their responsibil70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006 PUBLIC NU ISANCES ity to humanity...
...The politicians who confect sophistications for ducking the responsibilities of power are all around us and always have been...
...Blair understands the challenge to the West...
...With the Economist's editors assuming this preposterous position, let me assume at least an equally impudent position...
...Strangely this speech was not widely reported in America...
...He even stood out and directed his party away from the antique class-warfare of socialism...
...MAY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 71...
...In the first of three speeches he recently delivered on the threat against us he said, "This is not a clash between civilizations, but a clash about civilization...
...The immediate reward was prosperity for Britain and victory at the polls for Labour...
...He is a man who has taken chances on behalf of principles, principles that are at once sound and require resolve to defend...
...Rest in peace...
...There just are not enough votes out there in radioland to elect a left-wing Rush...
Vol. 39 • May 2006 • No. 4
