Blearily scanning the New York Times homepage yesterday morning as I sometimes reluctantly do, usually out of a faint sense of obligation, I was jolted into sudden hyper-alertness by the sight of an extraordinary revelation: turns out Tom Morello, the hard-charging
It has that same eye rolling feel as edgy college students wearing mass produced, corporate marketed Che Guevara t-shirts, Black Bloc rioters yelling for someone to call the police, sleezy Hollywood celebrities lecturing people on morality, Republican candidates butchering Bible verses in a church, or Iowa Caucus Democrats trying and failing to talk like farmers once an election cycle.
This Facebook post by John Burk is the perfect complement to this story about Raging for the Machine:
“At a recent Rage Against the Machine concert, a bunch of people who were required to be double vaccinated, required to wear masks and show their papers to enter – were all singing ‘f*** you I won’t do what you tell me’ … A piece of me has died”
"There was a time when Morello could’ve perhaps gotten away with appearing somewhat radical merely by railing endlessly against the depredations of the American Right, especially the Cultural Right, with all its hoary, scolding pretensions and Jerry Falwell-style religious obstinacy. That might have also been around the time that wearing “Rage Against The Machine” t-shirts your mom got at Walmart — after you heard “Guerrilla Radio” on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 — might’ve been a bit silly, but at least suggested you were trying to be an inchoately conscientious teen."
I keep forgetting Michael is almost the same age as me. You just described half of my friends in high school. To pay you back I will remind you of the horrible Green Day protest song, American Idiot, that was played to death.
Thanks for your always sane and balanced views with coverage of issues MSM distort or ignore. My guess is the NYTimes will revisit their experience from 2005ish when they wanted to get a share of the commenting thread action and shut it down after six months because readers added content and questions NYT won't tolerate. Subscriptions for a couple months have to be cheap enough that plenty of folks who want to vent will sign up for the platform access. Betcha a nickle it's a dumpster fire in the making and an implosion that's fun to watch!
My money is on Tom being the opening dinner act at next year's World Economic Forum in Davos where he can rage against corporate power and....survive on corporate power all at the same time!
"....and I don’t feel particularly “tyrannized” by them..."
Strange. There were students who didn't feel "particularly tyrannized" by the rules up at that college in Connecticut.
It's these 'meh' throwaway lines that chip away at the stories you do. They are echoes of the doctrinaire SJW white liberal and will be used to stifle the effects of your writing.
After all, if YOU don't feel 'tyrannized' ... where's the story? That will make your solid, bread and butter reporting less effective.
"Paul Ryan says he likes Rage Against The Machine, which everyone thinks is ironic since Ryan is 'the very machine they are raging against.' Get it? You're going to read that statement a lot."
...
"The real irony of this story is that the clueless one is Rage Against The Machine, not Paul Ryan. This isn't a partisan statement, it is simply a fact."
...
"Instead of condemning Paul Ryan for not being cool enough to get it, Tom Morello might want to ask how it is possible that 'the embodiment of the machine we are raging against' ended up liking him. What was the precise mechanism that caused that to happen?"
...
"And why, when Tom Morello wants to rage against Paul Ryan, he does it through the subversive, iconoclastic, angry medium of.... Rolling Stone? That'll get him. Let me be clear: I don't blame Morello for writing in Rolling Stone, I blame him for not asking himself what kind of a man is he that attracts Rolling Stone."
"Paul Ryan and Tom Morello are 100% the exact same person. I realize they and you may think they are different, but they are more closely a product of their immediate environment and generation than any of their incidental differences. If Morello and Ryan went back in time and sideways in geography to the November after the October Revolution, they would totally lock the door to their shared apartment. 'I don't know what the hell is going on outside,' it doesn't matter which one would say to the other, 'but I'm pretty sure I don't want any part of it.'"
/End of key excerpts
My one extremely irrelevant factual nitpick I have with the original Michael Tracy article above is this:
"White Fragility ... seminars ostensibly conducted under the auspices of eradicating racism,"
You have incorrectly described the crazy and graft that are present. DiAngelo is pretty explicit that in her world racism can never be eradicated no matter how many of her seminars you attend or how "premium" the seminars you attend are. Rather in her mind, and the mind of all the managers that listen to and contract her graft operation, her seminars and those like it are just regular penance people must pay for their original sin that can never be absolved by any means but must none-the-less forever be repented and paid for with such Medieval-Catholic-Church-style indulgences as people can only seek through her (extra ironic as she isn't even one of the minorities us original-sinners are supposed to repenting to, she is just there to be the intermediary who mops up all the money produced by such operations.) Be sure to come back next month, because you will need her "help" again just as much then no matter what you say, think, or do in the intervening time between paying your indulgence through (really more "to") her.
Isn't it about time you contrived a Michael Tracey branded outfit/dresscode that can be ordered via Amazon that memoralizes your rumpled, disheveled appearance at Conn College? Think Che Guevara visual but instead of raised fist, you're holding, in your sweaty white suburban fist, the microphone for your makeshift portable karaoke sound system. I'd buy one if you give student discounts. Michael, it's time to start monetizing.
I haven't followed the preachings of Morello lately, but I would bet a month's pay that he's all for the government's coercive mandate to jab every arm.
It has that same eye rolling feel as edgy college students wearing mass produced, corporate marketed Che Guevara t-shirts, Black Bloc rioters yelling for someone to call the police, sleezy Hollywood celebrities lecturing people on morality, Republican candidates butchering Bible verses in a church, or Iowa Caucus Democrats trying and failing to talk like farmers once an election cycle.
This Facebook post by John Burk is the perfect complement to this story about Raging for the Machine:
“At a recent Rage Against the Machine concert, a bunch of people who were required to be double vaccinated, required to wear masks and show their papers to enter – were all singing ‘f*** you I won’t do what you tell me’ … A piece of me has died”
https://www.facebook.com/johnburk1984/posts/3099546763707022?__cft__[0]=AZXTzjTx_4VjmxGZxTTrOc_rt-L6QQsP3HhA9orvtv9qiY1Wa2q71DHsthWwCfUDWa01oGZYTBVvxWUVssJeSmZGWfH9Un-FMmVSEZbyagLixfCfhQJaSxpBo1XQmdoFJWAkLeMvKLVFiBl6fs117Xmy&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R
"There was a time when Morello could’ve perhaps gotten away with appearing somewhat radical merely by railing endlessly against the depredations of the American Right, especially the Cultural Right, with all its hoary, scolding pretensions and Jerry Falwell-style religious obstinacy. That might have also been around the time that wearing “Rage Against The Machine” t-shirts your mom got at Walmart — after you heard “Guerrilla Radio” on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 — might’ve been a bit silly, but at least suggested you were trying to be an inchoately conscientious teen."
I keep forgetting Michael is almost the same age as me. You just described half of my friends in high school. To pay you back I will remind you of the horrible Green Day protest song, American Idiot, that was played to death.
Thanks for your always sane and balanced views with coverage of issues MSM distort or ignore. My guess is the NYTimes will revisit their experience from 2005ish when they wanted to get a share of the commenting thread action and shut it down after six months because readers added content and questions NYT won't tolerate. Subscriptions for a couple months have to be cheap enough that plenty of folks who want to vent will sign up for the platform access. Betcha a nickle it's a dumpster fire in the making and an implosion that's fun to watch!
Thank you.
I subscribed because of this.
My money is on Tom being the opening dinner act at next year's World Economic Forum in Davos where he can rage against corporate power and....survive on corporate power all at the same time!
Many blessings to you Michael. This is the most gloriously detached acidic spot on take downs I’ve seen in many moons.
How learned to stop raging and love the machine.
Yikes.
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more... unless it's Maggie Haberman.
"....and I don’t feel particularly “tyrannized” by them..."
Strange. There were students who didn't feel "particularly tyrannized" by the rules up at that college in Connecticut.
It's these 'meh' throwaway lines that chip away at the stories you do. They are echoes of the doctrinaire SJW white liberal and will be used to stifle the effects of your writing.
After all, if YOU don't feel 'tyrannized' ... where's the story? That will make your solid, bread and butter reporting less effective.
Great Piece. This piece is an excellent companion piece with a related piece by "The Last Psychologist" from almost a decade ago (2012) available here: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/08/paul_ryan_vs_rage_against_the.html
Key excerpts from the referred essay:
"Paul Ryan says he likes Rage Against The Machine, which everyone thinks is ironic since Ryan is 'the very machine they are raging against.' Get it? You're going to read that statement a lot."
...
"The real irony of this story is that the clueless one is Rage Against The Machine, not Paul Ryan. This isn't a partisan statement, it is simply a fact."
...
"Instead of condemning Paul Ryan for not being cool enough to get it, Tom Morello might want to ask how it is possible that 'the embodiment of the machine we are raging against' ended up liking him. What was the precise mechanism that caused that to happen?"
...
"And why, when Tom Morello wants to rage against Paul Ryan, he does it through the subversive, iconoclastic, angry medium of.... Rolling Stone? That'll get him. Let me be clear: I don't blame Morello for writing in Rolling Stone, I blame him for not asking himself what kind of a man is he that attracts Rolling Stone."
"Paul Ryan and Tom Morello are 100% the exact same person. I realize they and you may think they are different, but they are more closely a product of their immediate environment and generation than any of their incidental differences. If Morello and Ryan went back in time and sideways in geography to the November after the October Revolution, they would totally lock the door to their shared apartment. 'I don't know what the hell is going on outside,' it doesn't matter which one would say to the other, 'but I'm pretty sure I don't want any part of it.'"
/End of key excerpts
My one extremely irrelevant factual nitpick I have with the original Michael Tracy article above is this:
"White Fragility ... seminars ostensibly conducted under the auspices of eradicating racism,"
You have incorrectly described the crazy and graft that are present. DiAngelo is pretty explicit that in her world racism can never be eradicated no matter how many of her seminars you attend or how "premium" the seminars you attend are. Rather in her mind, and the mind of all the managers that listen to and contract her graft operation, her seminars and those like it are just regular penance people must pay for their original sin that can never be absolved by any means but must none-the-less forever be repented and paid for with such Medieval-Catholic-Church-style indulgences as people can only seek through her (extra ironic as she isn't even one of the minorities us original-sinners are supposed to repenting to, she is just there to be the intermediary who mops up all the money produced by such operations.) Be sure to come back next month, because you will need her "help" again just as much then no matter what you say, think, or do in the intervening time between paying your indulgence through (really more "to") her.
The finest Tracey snarkical evah.
DUDE! Whatcha' doin' in Quebec City?
I spent a few days there for the first time in July and LOVED the place. WAY cooler/hipper and interesting than my hometown NYC.
You in Canada for a while? If you're going thru the 401 to Toronto, I'd love to take you to dinner in Kingston, ON.
I'll take you.
YOU pay. LOL jk
Didn't Coldplay just do Gates?
Isn't it about time you contrived a Michael Tracey branded outfit/dresscode that can be ordered via Amazon that memoralizes your rumpled, disheveled appearance at Conn College? Think Che Guevara visual but instead of raised fist, you're holding, in your sweaty white suburban fist, the microphone for your makeshift portable karaoke sound system. I'd buy one if you give student discounts. Michael, it's time to start monetizing.
I haven't followed the preachings of Morello lately, but I would bet a month's pay that he's all for the government's coercive mandate to jab every arm.
Didn't know who Tom Morello was before this, but I still found this funny, and am sure MT said everything I need to know.