Globex Corporation Newsletter

Tony Snow of Fox News has been named White House Press Secretary. It's a natural fit, really, Snow a conservative commentator and former speech writer for another president named Bush seems like a good fit to me. He understands the press, understands the conservative point of view and having been involved in live TV can think well on his feet. I think all of those skills will be needed in his new job.

In looking for photos of Tony Snow to mess with, I found one of him in a band. It seems Tony Snow is a musician (guitar, sax, flute) in a DC area band called Beats Workin'. I personally think that's really cool. I imagine it's even more difficult for a person of some fame to perform music in front of people. Imagine running into a bar with Tony Snow on flute. Your first thought would be "why the hell a flute," followed by "haven't I seen that guy on Fox News?" Oh, the heckling opportunities would be endless....

I looked through the bands website and found Song Lists. Nice mix of music played by Beats Workin'. The most contemporary artists that I could find that they cover are Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton. Now I know nothing of the politics of the other members of Beats Workin', but I do know that Tony Snow is pretty conservative. This has seemed to be something of a theme with conservatives and music.

I remember listening to conservative radio host Laura Ingram after the Live 8 concert. Live 8 was staged during the G8 economic summit, basically as a counterpoint of what was going on at the summit. I didn't pay much attention to either, but I thought that it was really cool that Pink Floyd reunited for the show. Laura Ingram found the need to review the concert. It became clear after about 15 seconds that the only acceptable bands to her were of the classic rock type. I'm not going to get down on anyone's musical tastes, but it seemed she was down on current day acts simply because they were current day acts. Some of the current acts took shots at the current US administration. So did some of the classic bands. Pink Floyd has shown themselves to be pretty anti-conservative politics, but Laura Ingram loved them at Live 8.

If you listen to Rush Limbaugh, you'll hear The Pretenders' "Back to Ohio" as sort of a theme song for his show. The song always cuts out before you hear any lyrics. I'm sure it's no accident as the song, written by Ohio native Chrissie Hynde, is about the economic decay of the area brought on by the politics of the early 1980's. I seem to recall that being at about the time of the rise to power of the Reagan conservatives and their supply-side economics. None of that seems to matter to Limbaugh and his producers, apparently "Back to Ohio" has a good beat and you can dance to it.

Ronald Reagan himself wanted to use Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" as a campaign song. Springsteen, whose politics are quite a bit left of center refused. Apparently Reagan never actually listened to the song as it's not really a patriotic song, rather the story of a man who was in the Vietnam war and how it screwed up his life when he returned home. That didn't seem to matter to Reagan.

Some people like country music. Some people like conservative politics. I don't much care for either, but some people have chosen to like those things and I'm not going to tell anyone they've made the wrong choice. The didn't, they made the choices that were right for them at the time.

It's not stupid for conservatives to like classic rock music, it is pretty stupid to not understand the meaning of the songs you use to try to forward your message.

BOJ