Op-Ed By Allen Bacon, The Daily Bosco
Ok, so I'm perusing the latest edition of Rolling Stone Magazine and the first thing I notice is the sexy, young Senator Barack Obama on the front cover looking very GQ in a suit I definitely gotta get.
Think of the covers of Rolling Stone over the years. There's Yoko Ono and John Lennon on the cover in bed with John in the fetal position. There's John with a cigarette in army fatigues. There's Motley Crue. There's a few covers with Bruce Springsteen. There's a few covers with Madonna on it. In other words, if you are hip and cool in the eyes of Jann Wenner, Annie Liebowitz and company you get to be on the cover. "Gonna see my picture on the cuv-uh....gonna buy five copies for my mutha"
The thing is... I want to believe a lot of young people still read this publication and put stock in it. It's a very powerful lobby. When Jann Wenner writes a huge op-ed piece gushing over Barack and giving him rock star status and throws his mug on the cover, you know a lot of young people and people who grew up with Rolling Stone are going to get out and vote for Barack because he's cool. Barack may be rhetorically speaking, the best public speaker to ever run for President. He talks the talk of change and we want things to change so badly...but he has to start providing some ideas with substance.
I think Wenner and friends need to let the political process run it's course for a couple of months before endorsing anybody. I also think maybe he should bring up the fact to his young readers who never have voted before that we've had some rather charismatic people running for President who caught the public's eye and imagination for a while. Remember Gary Hart? Remember Jesse Jackson? They sound good...but they didn't quite deliver. Even one of the guys who actually got in...John Kennedy...great public speaker, very charismatic...but a great President? Not so fast.
I found it quite ironic that in the same issue that the Stone was glorifying a Woodstock-like concert. It sounded like a great concert but it talked about people on all types of drugs, rolling around in the mud, taking communal showers in sinks. Topless women. I guess you had to be there. This is like 1968 all over again. And Barack Obama is the new Bobby Kennedy. Or Jann Wenner wants it to be 1968 all over again...when Rolling Stone was actually a good and cutting edge magazine.
And while we are on the subject. Caught the Bruce Springsteen re-broadcast on 60 Minutes last night. I don't know about you, but I'm getting really tired of Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Sheryl Crow, John Mellenkamp, and other performers taking musical and verbal potshots at the current administration. We already know that it has to change. And that's why we are voting. But guys and gals if you really had any balls you would actually run for political office instead of hiding behind your music and guitars. Al Franken, for all his flaws, actually had the guts to do that.
Oh, it's going to be an interesting rest of the summer and early fall.
No comments:
Post a Comment