Exile on Main Street (Part I)

At least I have her love, the CITY she loves me. Lonely as I am, together we cry...

One of the major themes of today's political landscape can be broken down as simply the disconnect between Big Cities and Rural America. "Main Street not Wall Street" was the kind of bumper sticker slapped across the mouths of every ambitious politician this side of a bag of Doritos over the last two years. Both parties tried to capitalize on this social class rivalry, stopping short of outlining gang colors (Green$$ for Big Cities and Cow-Manure-Brown for Towns).

In this current showcase we have the Liberal "Elite" Democrats cast as the City Slickers while Conservatives are pegged as more in touch with Small town "Real" America.

First, why so? It started a million years ago when principles and tendencies started forming unavoidable trends of political affiliation. Lets examine the two sides, starting with the Left. The Right will be covered in my next post.

The Liberal Elites

The Liberals have been called many things over the years. During the Civil Rights era Liberals were looked at as radicals. Radicals because they had an easier time mixing with the blacks and hispanics. Radicals because they favored employees over their bosses as best exemplified by the Labor Unions generally backing Democratic Candidates. Radicals because many of them broke out of breadbasket Religious ideologies. And Radicals because they fervently opposed War, took an impressive amount of drugs and idolized Rock n' Roll icons rather than they're parents.

But why "Elite", Lou? Well, simply put, generally people that live in major cities are exposed to more culture. They most likely would be exposed to at least 10 Nationalities on their morning commute to work alone. More nationalities lends itself to expanded ideas, understanding of those different than yourself and overall nature-of-the-beast coexistence. It's this kind of intellectual curiosity that goes hand in hand with the "Elite" stigma.

So you may be asking yourself, "How do liberals accomplish all this? How is it you can be a minority-loving-working-class-hippieface yet still morph into a snobby intellectual Elitist? The Answer: Lots of Yoga and multigrain granola bars.

Seriously though, I blame the Beatles. Or rather British Rock n' Rollers as a whole. See, they made the previously underground (and under-appreciated) style of black Blues music...white and cool. Simply put they gripped a lot of youth in this country, not through force or guilt but through their musical taste buds. Divide and Conquer! Pretty soon many of these kids got out of their poop kicking towns and moved either all the way East or all the way West. Plus, most of the Ivy League schools were in the Northeast.

Teachers, Artists, Musicians tended to lean liberal.

Why is that? Well, I believe that the job of parents are to instill rules and be the bad guy. Say "No", to many of the things kids want to do. It's a really tough gig borne mostly out of sheltering and overprotecting of a loved one. Who can blame them? But for me, the job of a teacher is to break them out of norms. Show them there's a lot more across the oceans and of course, question authority. Who's the authority? Police, politicians, priests and parents. The 4 P's of Conservative America! This was a huge threat to society so hence the attack on teachers and free thinking "elite's".

more to come...I'm sleepy.

Pose for Me, Baby

Can't help but laugh about certain words. If a picture is worth a thousand words, why do some words spark up so many pictures in our heads? The word I'm thinking about today is "poser". The thought of that word conjures up so many flash-card-style memories of 7th grade smirks from prepubescent know-it-all brats. Hard to believe that 13 year old kids that haven't so much as driven a car, drank a beer or much less earned a buck took such ownership of words like poser. Maybe because we couldn't squabble over much else (nobody was getting laid yet either), so I guess musical taste was the only currency available for drawing lines in the sand.

It was the early 90s. The hit video for "Jeremy" had all of us uniform wearing private school kids mesmerized. As the so called grunge wave hit our neighborhood, I remember certain kids immediately trying to sell the rest of us as if they came straight out of the womb sporting mushroom haircuts, dirty converse, all the while wrapped in red flannel. None of this is new, I guess I just can't help but crack up at how some of these "original and pioneering" flag holders for being "legit" kids threw around the word poser at everybody else who jumped on a micro-step slower. Funny study of human nature. The truth is, same is true for adults today.

You know how it starts, you hear about a band through a random friend or "indie" radio station that nobody's heard about. All of the sudden you're actively yet secretly working for them. All is well until they make it big. Boom. Your little baby's all growns up and she's banging the pop world six at a time. Pretty soon t-shirts are exploding faster than popcorn off of [insert fantasy hot chick's] blouse. And, naturally, you want EVERYONE to know that YOU knew about them FIRST! To this I say, stop being a freak show.

I mean seriously, about the only truest of the true original appreciators of your now favorite band were a couple of hairy gay dudes with tie dye shirts in Seattle. (I also feel its important to note I imagine them with cartoonishly long noses and Lennon-style-circled-lens reading glasses) And really? I like me better.

Yes, me. The guy that lives 3k Miles away from any real grassroots musical towns. Put it this way, if the music traveled all the way down to Miami, I'll bet the farm it brought a 10 piece luggage-shit-load of "pop" with it so stop fakin' the bacon boys and girls.

In the end, when it comes to good taste, it's better late than never.